Of Quarks and Quacks

 “Alice” - the Lawrence Livermore particle collider 

Say what you will, but the past 168 hours have been the living definition of an alpha and omega week. Say what? For those who studied a bit of Greek (and managed to stay awake during class), alpha (A) and omega (Ω) are, respectively, the first and last letters of the Greek αλφαβήτα (alphabet). The concept of “alpha and omega” also connotes bipolar opposites; the nadir and the zenith . . . the highest high and lowest low. And that they should both occur in the same 168-hour period (a week) is both eerie and one for the books.

Let’s begin with last week’s omega, its low point - and one I can write about with quite a bit more confidence than its alpha:  its high point.    This past Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, saying that COVID-19 vaccines have been “pushed on Americans,” asked the state Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing in Florida” related to these shots.  DeSantis announced his request for a grand jury during a media event to discuss “COVID-19 mRNA (“Messenger RNA) vaccine accountability,” where he was joined by state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D., and a group of professors, researchers and doctors - all of whom are noted for questioning the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines and whether adverse health reactions (lethal side effects) have been accurately reported. Within that part of the medical community which specializes in clinical trials in epidemiology and infectious diseases, the response to the DeSantis gang’s proposal was both swift and all but unanimous: that Governor DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo are, in the words of our late Grannie Annie,  “full of canal water.”    

As for the governor’s inane proposal: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement would serve as the primary investigator for a grand jury, though the governor’s petition said any law enforcement agency in the state could be called upon for the probe.

On the same day, DeSantis announced that Dr. Ladapo, who doubles as secretary of the Florida Department of Health, will lead what Ladapo called a “surveillance study” to explore deaths that occurred after people were vaccinated against COVID-19. “We are initiating a program here in Florida where we will be studying the incidents, in surveillance, of myocarditis within a few weeks of COVID-19 vaccination for people who died,” Ladapo said. (n.b.) Myocarditis is a condition that causes inflammation of the heart. It can be fatal . . . although it need have nothing to do with a COVID-19 vaccine or booster. Moreover, a recent clinical study showed that patients with COVID-19 “had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19.”)

One should expect that a state government’s Chief Medical Officer should possess significant experience in the area of public health. Checking the internet’s best source for medical research information [Clinical Trials.Gov] we find that Dr. Ladapo has taken part in precisely 5 clinical trials, only two of which were ever completed: Financial Incentives for Weight Reduction Study and Financial Incentives for Smoking Treatment. Compare this to the soon-to-be-retiring Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the 6th most cited medical researcher on planet earth, and that prior to being named head of the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] Dr. Rochelle Walensky was chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital . Talk about alpha to omega!)

The DeSantis/Ladapo proposal has next to nothing to do with public safety or the saving of lives. What it does involve is the governor’s obsession for keeping his name and worldview in front of the MAGA crowd who he believes may well be looking for a candidate to replace Donald Trump in 2024. Participating alongside Governor DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo at the Tuesday media event were Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya and epidemiologist Tracy Hoeg, both of whom are expected to be part of the the governor’s Public Health Integrity Committee. The committee, according to DeSantis, will “assess recommendations and guidance” that has come from entities such as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya served as a witness for the state in a high-profile lawsuit challenging a directive by DeSantis that schools avoid imposing mask requirements for students to stave off the spread of COVID-19. Bhattacharya also was one of the state's witnesses in a separate legal challenge of DeSantis' decision to reopen schools in the early stages of the pandemic. Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, M.D., PhD., is a board certified Sports Medicine and Spine Medicine specialist in California who has on innumerable occasions spoken out in favor of DeSantis’ anti-mask, anti-school closure mandates: “We know that masks interfere with communication, and children do not like wearing them. The children with hearing impairments and other impairments have difficulty wearing masks. And, we’re forcing them to do this just because we have this idea that they’re going to be doing something good. We have actually no high-quality evidence showing that they are.”

All we can hope for is that the seven-member Florida Supreme Court (six of whom were appointed by DeSantis) will vote against his petition for a Grand Jury, thereby staving off his desire to keep his “COVID vaccines are a conspiracy” campaign away from center stage as we move onwards to 2024.

Well, that’s the omega. What, pray tell is the alpha?

Only what could be the biggest scientific breakthrough since Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (1564-1642), the “Father of Modern Physics” proved the validity of Copernican heliocentrism (which states that the Earth rotates daily and revolves around the Sun) or Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (E = mc2, which expresses the fact that mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be changed into each other). In this case, the alpha may well turn out to be the BIGGEST and MOST IMPORTANT scientific breakthrough in the past half millennium: going back in time 14 billion years (or less than 6,000 if you are a Bible-toting literalist) to the very origins of the universe. For as of just the other day, Physicists have confirmed the existence of a doubly charmed baryon (a composite subatomic particle), opening the door to an entirely new kind of fusion, known as quark fusion.

Yes, yes, I know, many readers are going to tune out at this point, assuming that I’m going to continue writing in “Star Trek” technobabble. I promise this is not the case: I am neither a particle physicist nor a writer of science fiction; just a regular guy who took a 2 semesters of “College Physics for Philosophers” and a perpetual student. Believe me: I know a hell of a lot more about practical politics and medicine than I do about fusion.

As a brief introduction to this week’s alpha: You’re looking at quarks right now. Magazines, screens, and air are made of atoms, and atoms are largely made of protons and neutrons – which are the most familiar examples of the three-quark bundles that physicists call baryons. Fusion describes a general process in which particles recombine to form new particles, because the new particles need less energy to exist than the old ones did. With that scant info in tow, you should know that on 5 December, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California finally did it, focusing 2.05 megajoules of laser light onto a tiny capsule of fusion fuel and sparking an explosion that produced 3.15 MJ of energy—the equivalent of about three sticks of dynamite. This means that for the first time in human history, scientists have finally, finally been able to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction unlike any before in human history. That's because the fusion reaction produced more energy than it took to start the reaction.

I wish I could go in to greater detail, but this ain’t my field. Nonetheless, after chatting up several friends and classmates who know one hell of a lot more than I do (e.g., those who went into physics rather than philosophy, politics or rabbinics), they tell me that the result of this fusion test should ultimately change the energy picture for the entire globe; that ultimately we will be able to provide clean, non-lethal, non-polluting, infinitely available energy for the rest of human history. And if this isn’t the ultimate alpha, I cannot image what could be better.

What makes all of this so incredibly weird is that at precisely the same time that physicists - the experts whose “religion” is scientific truth - have made such a mind-numbing, historic pronouncement, the conspiracists - whose motto is “believe nothing but what we tell you” - are doing everything in their power to clobber and corrupt our gateway to the future. And for what? For clinging to power? For bringing Armageddon a few inches closer? For putting down those who did better than them in school? I simply do not know . . . and seriously doubt I ever shall.

What I do know is that the future will ultimately be far, far more in the hands of those who use their brains to bring about hope and progress, than those whose raison d’être is to create hysterical retrogression. And, it will also take a radical change in society, wherein telling lies and fomenting fear becomes as unacceptable as alchemy.

Wishing one and all a Happy, Merry Everything!

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Politics and Poker

                    Senator Krysten Sinema (I-AZ)

On Monday, November 23, 1959, a much anticipated musical, Fiorello, made its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street. Based on the life of the late, legendary New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick from a book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbot, it would run an impressive 785 performances and be awarded the 1960 Tony Award for best musical. It’s two main stars were Tom Bosley (best remembered for playing Ritchie Cunningham’s father Howard on “Happy Days”) as Fiorello (who, like hizzoner was actually Jewish), and Howard Da Silva (Silverblatt) as Republican machine boss Ben Marino.  (An avid, active leftist, Da Silva was coming off nearly a decade’s worth of political blacklisting when he was hired for the part of Boss Marino.  The role , which would win him a Tony Award, wound up reviving his career.  Today, he is best remembered for playing Benjamin Franklin in both the Broadway production and movie version of “1776”).

Fiorello follows La Guardia’s career during World War I, his years in Congress, and then his time as mayor. As Mayor of New York City La Guardia reformed city politics by helping end Tammany Hall's vaunted political machine. And of course, as everyone remembers, he read the funnies over radio during a city-wide newspaper strike so that the kiddies wouldn’t be bereft of “Popeye the Sailor Man,” “Lil Abner,” and “Dick Tracy.” Fiorello is filled with pointedly witty songs adorned with great lyrics.  Hell, what can you expect from a musical birthed by the likes of Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof), Jerome Weidman (I Can Get It For You Wholesale) and George Abbot (The Pajama Game)?  My favorite song in Fiorello is Poker and Politics, sung by Republican boss Ben Marino (Da Silva) and his cronies.  It includes the lyrics:

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Playing for a pot that's mediocre
Politics and poker, running neck and neck
If politics seems more predictable
That's because usually you can stack the deck!

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Makes the average guy a heavy, heavy smoker
Bless the nominee and give him our regards
And watch while he learns that in poker and politics
Brother, you've gotta have that slippery haphazardous commodity
You've gotta have the cards!

These lyrics came to mind the other day when I woke up and learned that overnight, Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema had announced her defection from the Democratic Party and would henceforth be a registered Independent. My initial response - like that of most of my Democratic friends and colleagues - was a string of vile, four-twelve-letter epithets and an angry feeling of ultimate betrayal. Imagine that! Just a few hours after we were able to cheer Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia election and crow over the fact that come January 3, 2023, the Democrats would have a solid 51-49 lead in the United States Senate, Arizona’s least-favorite drama queen turned back the clock. “DAMN HER TO HELL!” was my initial thought.

But then, miraculously, “Poker and Politics” came to mind:

Quickly, I hunted it up on YouTube, replayed it and understood that in switching from Democrat to Independent, she might actually have done us (Democrats, that is), a favor.  For in this case, the cause of her decision was far more in keeping with poker than with chess . . . the pursuit I most commonly liken the art of practical politics to.   

It seems to me that Senator Sinema’s move is more political stunt than parliamentary strategy.  Not all that much will change as a result of her “caucusing” in the same broom closet as the senate’s other two independents: Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maine’s Angus King.  In the main, Krysten Sinema is quite liberal on social and  cultural issues, receives high marks from the likes of Planned Parenthood and anti-gun organizations, has a history of policy advocacy regarding LGBT rights and issues, and has always voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act.  Where she tends to differ with her now former Democratic colleagues is on issues affecting taxation and the economy.  But even there she can sound like a progressive: "Raising taxes is more economically sound than cutting vital social services."  According to the Bipartisan Index created by the Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, Sinema was the sixth most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the first session of the 115th United States Congress.  

One can easily say that Krysten Sinema has always marched to the beat of her own drummer.  Consider that in her 2018 race for the senate (which she eventually won, defeating incumbent Martha McSally by a scant 55,000 votes out of nearly 2.4 million cast), she described herself as having “a fierce, independent record,” and being “independent, just like Arizona.”  Nonetheless, her jumping the fence won’t really amount to a hill of beans. Chuck Schumer will still be Senate Majority Leader, but this time around won’t have to share power with Senator McConnell; Democrats will have greater power within Senate committees, having the ability to issue subpoenas and get judicial nominees to the floor without having to resort to Discharge Resolutions.  

So why has she left the Democratic fold and become an independent?  Because of the cards she’s been dealt . . . that’s why.  Facing reelection in 2024, she looks at her “hand” (polling figures, that is) and sees that among Arizona voters in general, she holds a mere 18% approval rating. Among Democrats in particular, her favorable-versus-unfavorable rate is 5% to 82%; among Independents it’s 25%/56%, and among Republicans 25%-54%. She is smart enough to realize that were she to run in a Democratic primary, she could be beaten by a pair of deuces.

By changing her Arizona registration, she leaves the Democratic field open. Whoever jumps in feet-first will have the obvious edge. Chances are that person will be 7-term Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego, who served as a combat marine during Iraqi Freedom, is bilingual, a formidable fundraiser, and a member of the House Armed Services Committee and chair of the Intelligence and Special Operations subcommittee. His campaign website is already operational, thus pretty much clearing the field for himself.

 On the Republican side of the aisle, leaders of the non-MAGA wing of the Arizona GOP have long dreamt of current Governor Doug Ducey pulling up a chair joining playing a little 5-card stud. They had courted him to run this year against incumbent (and former astronaut) Mark Kelly who carries an enviable 78% approval rating among Arizona Democrats. Ducey ultimately declined to do so, thus leaving the field to MAGA venture capitalist Blake Masters, who was crushed by Kelly. Ducey has already stated that he has no interest in running for Senate. But Republicans are again pushing him to get in for 2024 . . . they simply cannot stomach another MAGA-ite representing their party.

This scenario leaves Senator Sinema with a pass into the general election. Generally speaking, Arizona political history shows that when an independent runs in a statewide general election, that person tends to draw votes away from Democrats rather than Republicans. Of course, it all presumes that the Republicans don’t make the same mistake as they did over and over again in 2022 . . . nominate a Luddite from the MAGA wing of the party.

In all likelihood, Krysten Sinema’s political career has run its course. Perhaps by registering as an Independent, she has given herself a plausible way to leave the game of politics and poker and start earning a seven-figure income as a lobbyist.

It sure beats the daylights out of working for a living.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Ignorance and Knowledge, Wisdom and Lord Beaconsfield

When I sat down to write my first blog essay in early February of 2005, I set out a couple of hard and fast rules for myself: never review a book I had not read nor a movie I had not seen; never pass off as fact that which is truly fiction; never write about a subject, situation or scenario I have not, to the best of my ability, researched as best I can. And above all, never fear admitting ignorance . . . there is always time to learn from someone who can help fill in the gaps. These rules of the road can best be summed up by the greatest of all second-rate English novelists, who would also become Prime Minister of the British Empire: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), a.k.a. the Earl of Beaconsfield.  For he once wrote, “To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

The author of at least 17 novels (the best-known of which were Coningsby, Sybil (also known as “The Two Nations”) and Tancred, Disraeli was the son of Isaac D’Israeli, a distinguished literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi, Sephardic Jews whose families had emigrated from Italy to England in the mid-18th century. Although raised and educated at London’s Sephardic Bevis Marks synagogue, Benjamin was baptized at age 12. Conversion to Christianity (a religion which he never in fact practiced) permitted him to enter polite British society and eventually politics as an adult. Throughout his career, he was the target of innumerable anti-Semitic barbs and jabs. As Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister, he was finally asked “What religion are you?” to which he quickly (and quite brilliantly) replied, “I am the blank page between the Hebrew and the Christian Bible.”

The above serves as a prolegomena to why I have never written on certain subjects . . . like computer technology, anything containing the word algorithm, the U.S. Internal Revenue code, the rules and strategies of any non-American team sport, and the worlds of hedge fund management, value investing, leveraged buyouts and, last but not least, cryptocurrency.  In brief - and following Lord Beaconsfield’s sage advice - I am wise enough to know what I cannot grasp, and find nothing demeaning in admitting that fact . . . and then searching for experts who hopefully can teach me about that which I do not know.

Over the past couple of years, a handful of the more business savvy members of our family - as opposed to the academic types - have been urging me to get into cryptocurrency. I must admit up front that despite having read quite bit about that realm of cyber-business and learning that people have actually made “killings” in it, I still don’t have the foggiest notion of what it is all about. Oh sure, I can read, cut and paste a definition of it . . . I’ve read Kaspersky until I’m blue in the face.  But somehow, I just never trusted the whole crypto currency thing.  It struck me as being a bit of a cult; something which QAnon addicts who just naturally mis- or distrust big business turn to in order to make their fortunes. 

Then came the utter bankruptcy of Sam Bankman-Fried (known as SBF) of FTX.

Once considered a financial wunderkind, Bankman-Fried now faces legal battles, possible extradition and bankruptcy in a sudden shift from his previous high-profile status as a mythic entrepreneur, political funder and philanthropist heralded for saving other struggling crypto firms. In short, the saga may have cost some investors their life savings.

                    Sam Bankman-Fried  (SBF)

The crash of Bankman-Fried’s disgraced empire comes as FTX, the company he founded and led as CEO, (along with Alameda Research, the exchange’s trading arm) until his recent resignation, grapples with a solvency crisis. Established in 2018, FTX was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges until it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. Within a single day, November 8, 2022, his net worth plummeted an estimated 94 percent to $991.5 million on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This devastating fall represents the largest one-day drop in the index’s 10-year history. Commentators say his personal assets may now stand below zero.

This unfolding drama reads like a Hollywood blockbuster in the making. It comes complete with a meteoric rise from obscurity and subsequent fall from world renown, not to mention tremendous financial donations, a mea culpa issued on social media and a class action lawsuit naming headline legends — all within a rapid span of four years.

The suit, filed by Florida lawyer Adam Moskowitz, alleges billions of dollars in damages and names NFL quarterback Tom Brady and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, as well as Larry David, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, and Shaquille O’Neal among celebrities who could be liable for crypto endorsement.  Investors rushed to rapidly withdraw their investments while advisers have reportedly struggled to locate both cash and crypto amidst the ruins. Noting poor internal oversight and record keeping, critics are drawing unsavory parallels between FTX’s implosion and that of Lehmann Brothers, Enron Corp. and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

SBF’s financial collapse raises broader questions about the crypto industry, which the entrepreneur entered following a stint at Jane Street Capital. Soon after, he established Alameda Research as a quantitative bitcoin trading firm. What makes this plot twist even more complicated is that SBF drew attention for his commitment to “effective altruism,” his membership in an organization called Giving What We Can, in which wage earners dedicate 10% to effective charities, and his public pledge to give away his fortune over his career.

According to Open Secrets, which tracks campaign finances, SBF donated about $40 million to the US midterm election campaigns for many candidates supported by pro-Israel groups, including the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC. SBF also donated $250,000 directly to DMFI PAC last May. And in the 2020 election campaign, he was among the top donors to Joe Biden’s campaign, with a personal contribution of $5.2 million.

I’ve got to tell you: since the collapse of FTX and SBF’s cryptocurrency empire, I have not asked the family financial barons how they’re doing . . . or if they suffered significant losses. Why? Partly because if they don’t want to open up, it’s none of my business; mostly though, because I do not want to come close to engaging in schadenfreude . . . German for “gloating at the misfortune of others.”

OK, so I don’t really understand how FTX and Alameda Research worked, and what ultimately caused it to collapse. I certainly don’t own a crystal ball that will tell me what long term danger it represents to the world of investments . . . let alone individual investors. What I do know - and what scares the living daylights out of me - is that anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists are going to start tying a gigantic tail to SMF and his family. With the staggering growth in worldwide anti-Semitic traffic, this is the worst possible time for Sam Bankman-Fried to become the name and face of a gargantuan international banking crash . . . even one as relatively unknown to the masses as crypto.

The fact is this is the worst possible time for Sam Bankman-Fried’s name and vast failure to become page-one news. Consider that this is coming on the heels of two notorious anti-Semites (“Ye” and Nick Fuentes) dining with FPOTUS at Mar-a-Lago; newly-minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk reopening the Twittersphere to the most virulent hate speech; and NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving directing his hundreds of thousands of online followers to a link introducing anti-Semites to a notorious film - “From Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” - which revives age-old lies about the “true” origins of the Hebrew people. (In keeping with my pledge not to review a book or movie that I have neither read nor seen, I direct your attention to a summary review posted on the ADL website on December 3 of this year.)

 For generations without end, whenever the tireless ebb and flow of society’s mysteries and mutations becomes too difficult to grok or decode, fingers of blame all too frequently come to the fore.  We are, alas, living in one such generation; fingers of blame are once again being pointed at Jews for being both the source and the cause of societal change.  We’ve heard -and suffered from - it before.  The charges are mostly old, even if the names change:

• Jews control the media, banks, and governments;

• Jews were at the heart of the slave trade to the early America;

• As recently as March 2018, a Washington D.C. city council member claimed that the Rothschild family was “controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”  

• Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (who will likely play a significant role in the House come January 2023) implicated “Rothschild Inc” in connection with a deadly forest fire that, she wrote, was started using laser beams from space.  Greene has also frequently amplified the QAnon theory that George Soros, a Hungarian-American Jewish billionaire and mega-donor, is an enemy of the people.

• “Replacement theory” - the conspiratorial notion that Jews and other non white  people are consciously engaged in “replacing” white protestants with Hispanic immigrants who have a much higher birth rate in order to take power from “real” Americans.  This nonsense can be heard frequently on Fox News, News Max, and One America News.

• That in addition to the above, Jews are also heavily engaged in such anti-American movements as “ANTIFA” and “Black Lives Matter,” as well as being perpetrators of “Critical Race Theory.”

I repeat: this is the worst possible time for the Jewish community in America . . . and indeed around the world . . .  to have yet another villain added to the list of predatory conspirators.  Don’t be overly surprised if someday soon, someone doesn’t unearth a quote from one of Disraeli’s long-forgotten characters (Sidonia, an ardent Jewish nationalist who is likely a cross between Lionel de Rothschild and Disraeli himself) hidden in the pages of Coningsby.  For deeply buried within its pages, Sidonia informs Harry Coningsby, the penniless Lord Chancellor that “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” 

So who are these “different personages?” The Rothschilds?  August Belmont? George Soros? Michael Bloomberg?  Sam Bankman-Fried?  Just ask “Ye,” Nick Fuentes, the newly-bankrupted Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene . . . for they, among many others, are just ignorant enough and evil enough to speak of things they know virtually nothing about.

  Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone  

A Tale Told by an Idiot . . . Signifying Nothing

Nearly 60 years ago, “our crowd” of academically enriched students at Robert A. Millikan Junior High School (which as of February 8 of this year was renamed “Louis Armstrong Middle School”), flocked to a year-long elective class called, simply, “Reading Enrichment.” This class was taught by Edward Blakely, one of the most literate people we would ever know. His class was both brilliant and controversial, and made many demands upon us . . . like reading, reading, reading, writing, writing, writing. thinking, thinking, thinking, and memorizing, memorizing, memorizing. Part Renaissance man, part martinet, under Mr. Blakely’s entrancing guidance, we delved deeply into some of the world’s greatest, most noteworthy and censorable literature of all time. (n.b. It is rather doubtful that here, in Ron DeSantis’ Florida c. 2022, that a majority of the books, plays and essays we were assigned would remain on library bookshelves, let alone be taught in what today is referred to as a middle school.)

Even after so many, many years, I can still picture the students in that wonderful class: Gottlieb, Halpert, Korinblith, Miller, Saltzman, Sands, Scharf, Wilson, Wald, and yours truly. (Alan: any names I may have forgotten, please clue me . . . I, like you, am afflicted with junior moments). Even more importantly, many of us can still recite from memory passages of the novels, plays and essays our beloved teacher assigned us. Mr. Blakley was a galaxy-class instructor who introduced us to the joys and intricacies of such works and writers as:

• Aristophanes (Lysistrata), a bawdy anti-war comedy, wherein the title character, a strong as nails woman, convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace;

• Beowulf, an epic 8th century old English poem which tells the story of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, who gains fame as a young man by vanquishing the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother, thus becoming king;

• Boccaccio (The Decameron, also known as “The Human Comedy”) which is a series of 100 short tales told by 7 young men and 3 young women during a ten-day period in which they are quarantined due to a pandemic;

• Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), a so-called “frame story” (a narrative that frames or surrounds another story or set of stories), in which the framing device is used for the collection of stories told by 30 people on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, Kent;

• Charles Dickens (Great Expectations), likely the great English novel of all time, and

• William Shakespeare’s, Macbeth, in which Three witches tell the Scottish general Macbeth that he will rise to become King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth kills the king (Duncan), becomes the new king, and kills more people out of sheer paranoia. Civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth, resulting in more death. Seventeen years after killing King Duncan, Malcolm Canmore, (the son of King Duncan) in turn murders Macbeth.

Macbeth is indeed, a most grisly play in 5 acts; it puts one of the most psychologically flawed (if not THE most psychologically flawed) characters in all classic literature right up there on center stage. It is also a deeply political work, much like Lysistrata, Beowulf, Great Expectations, and virtually every work Mr. Blakely assigned our class. And by “political,” I mean far more than the modern definition of “relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.” Going way back to the days of Aristotle and Plato, they saw politics as being equal parts art, science, and strategy . . . a far cry from where we are today.

So what does all this “remembrance of things past” (not to be confused with Marcel Proust’s massive 7-volume novel of the same name [À la recherche du temps perdu]? Isn’t this a mostly political blog? And partisan politics at that?

Well, it is. With all the ink and hot air still accruing to our FPOTUS - especially in light of his recent announcement that he is once again running for the nation’s highest office - I find myself remembering the many, many months we spent reading, learning. contemplating and memorizing under the tutelage of Mr. Blakely . . . especially Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Or to be painfully precise, Act 5, Scene 5. lines 19-28. Tell me if you sense an eerie pre-prescience in this famous soliloquy. What is frequently forgotten is that before launching into his brief, dispirited downer, Seyton, Macbeth’s chief servant, informs him The Queen, my Lord, is dead. Macbeth responds not with grief for his mate, nor with tears staining his face , but with an oft-forgotten line: She should have died hereafter: / There would have been time for such a word.

It is only then that he launches into the meditation memorized and analyzed by oh so many over the past 400 years:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I’ve listened to literally dozens of great actors (Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Patrick Stewart, Baron Olivier and Sir Ian McKellen, among others) pronounce these words. To my way of thinking, only Sir Ian seems to have gotten it right . . . putting the first “tomorrow” as the end of the sentence which preceded it. In other words, it should be read She should have died hereafter: / There would have been time for such a word TOMORROW.

Lady Macbeth’s death prompts Macbeth to reflect upon the futility of all of his actions: his ‘overweening ambition’, which had spurred him on to commit murder after murder (including that of King Duncan, no less) and take the kingdom for himself. It has all been for nothing; now he is truly alone, with most of the lords rallying to Macduff, and standing foursquarely against him.

Although not nearly so self-aware as Shakespeare’s fictional King, Donald Trump is every bit as avaricious and power mad as the Scottish thane-cum monarch. But listening to and watching him over the past several weeks, he finally seems, eerily, a bit more like Macbeth: beginning to grasp that much of what he has accomplished is, in the end of all his tomorrows, a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. I find myself wondering if, like the former Thane of Glammis and Thane of Cawdor, he is beginning to realize that all his mendacious verbiage has finally amounted to little more than A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I have to wonder precisely what - or who - Donald Trump sees when he looks into his gilt mirror: a leader whose power and greatness are inspired by God above, or "a poor player who struts his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Even Macbeth came to recognize that he was alone . . . that all his troops, advisors and acolytes had stormed out in droves, leaving him with only his blindly loyal attendant Seyton (could this be Shakespeare’s play on the name Satan?); a single “yes-man” to stand by his side to face his ultimate fate. Who does Donald Trump have left? Madison Cawthorn? Matt Gaetz? Mike “My Pillow” Lindell? Senator Tommy Tuberville? Former California Rep. Devin Nunes? Indeed, what he is left with is little more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I do not in the least feel sorry for Donald Trump. I do feel both deeply angry and greatly concerned for what he has forced upon the American future. As a politically active member of a generation often accused of being pro-Communist and anti-American, I am stupefied by just how much the tables have turned. Those who accused us of being in league with drugs and the devil more than a half-century ago, are now the true anti-patriots; those who once considered themselves the most pro-American, are now the ones who could most easily destroy the American ideals of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Mr. Blakely, it turns out, was oh so wise to teach us everything he knew about Macbeth. Without knowing it, he was preparing us for the future. Turns out, his desire to teach was matched by our need to learn . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

The Red Wave That Turned Into a Trickle

Who, besides we political geeks and nerds, would have ever held out hope that except for FDR in 1934, and George W. Bush (after 9/11 and going to war on false pretenses) in 2002, that Joe Biden would have the best midterm election of any sitting President in memory? (As if any of us can actually remember 1934.) Well, that’s the way thing have gone. And despite the fact that we still don’t know if the next House Speaker is going to be Nancy Pelosi, current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (who has already announced his candidacy) or Ohio’s favorite Luddite “Gym” Jordan, Democrats have done a far better job than most pundits might have imagined. There is still a possibility (slim though it may be) that the Lower Chamber will remain in the hands of the Democrats. Then too, who would have put good money on the Democrats keeping their oh-so-slim majority in the Senate?

So far, Democrats have picked up one Senate seat (Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s vanquishing of celebrity surgeon/snake oil salesman Mehmet Oz by 4 points [50.8%-46.8%] despite still recovering from a rather severe stroke?  As of this writing (Saturday, 11//12/2020 at 10:30), Republicans and Democrats are tied at 49-49 in the senate, which means that in order for the Democrats to maintain control, they will have to win in either Nevada, or Georgia, where there will be a runoff election between Herschel Walker (R) and incumbent Senator Rafael Warnock (D) on December 6.  Incumbent Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters, who ran as an election denier who had received a coveted endorsement by Donald Trump. Running as a moderate, Kelly - who won a special election to fill the seat that was left open at the time of John McCain’s death - ran as a moderate, breaking with Biden on issues like immigration as he sought to navigate headwinds generated by Biden’s low approval rating and widespread economic pain due to rising inflation. carried moderates by a margin of 63% to 33% and independents by a margin of 55% to 39%, NBC News exit polls showed. Kelly won women by 12 points and lost men by 4 points. Kelly and Masters broke even with white voters but Kelly carried the state's large Latino electorate by 18 points, assuring his victory.

N.B. Early this morning (Sunday 11/13), the A.P. called the Nevada senate race pitting incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto [D] against former Attorney General Paul Laxalt in Masto’s favor, thus assuring that Democrats would maintain control of the upper chamber. The Democratic win in the Senate is likely to prompt further recrimination in Republican circles over who is to blame for the poor showing. Much attention has so far focused on Trump after he backed rightwing or celebrity candidates in several key races who lost, such as Dr Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.

There are still several significant House races as yet to be determined. In California’s 47th District. which is largely made up of Orange County (as a kid we used to call it “Orangutan” due to its ties to the John Birch Society), the Harvard-educated law professor Katie Porter, who was first elected in 2018, is locked in a battle with Conservative Republican Scott Baugh, best known for having been sentenced to paying $47,900 in civil fines stemming from violations of California's Political Reform Act. For her part, Porter, a moderate Democrat, is the first member of her party elected to represent Orange County in many, many years. As of early Sunday morning 11/13, with 72% of the votes counted, Porter (who is viewed as a potential future star of her party) is ahead by 4,733 votes (51.27%-48.73%).

In Colorado’s 3rd District, ultra-conservative gadfly Lauren Boebert led with 50.17 percent of the vote to Democrat Adam Frisch's 49.83 percent with 99 percent of votes counted, pulling ahead of the Democrat with a razor thin margin. Although not a particularly powerful member of the House, Boebert manages to get herself on the news for her ultra-pro gun and anti-Semitic rants . . . and her ability to raise campaign cash. Ironically, the man who may well end her 1-term Congressional career, Aspen City Council member Adam Frisch, is from a practicing Conservative Jewish family.

Speaking of Jewish candidates, despite the frightening uptick in anti-Semitism, a surprising number of Jewish men and women have found electoral success. The new, 118th Congress, will include:

• Becca Balint, the first Jewish woman elected to Congress from Vermont. Balint, a former state senator and activist, was the first openly gay person to serve as President pro tempore in Vermont's State Senate. She is now Vermont's first female representative and its first openly gay representative.

• Seth Magaziner, Rhode Island, Rhode Island's treasurer, who defeated Republican challenger Allan Fung for a seat held by Democrats for three decades but that many had considered a prime Republican steal opportunity. Magaziner, who considers himself ethnically Jewish but does not identify religiously, is the son of a Catholic mother and former senior Bill Clinton adviser Ira Magaziner. He now joins Rep. David Cicilline in Rhode Island's Congressional delegation, which is now 100% Jewish.

• Jared Moskowitz was elected to replace Florida Democrat Ted Deutch, who left his role as the most prominent pro-Israel member of the Democratic caucus to run the American Jewish Committee. Formerly Florida's director of emergency management, Moscowitz played a primary role in dealing with the state's rising antisemitism, adopting a similar tack as his predecessor in condemning allegedly anti-Jewish sentiments from both parties.

• New Yoker Daniel Goldman, the former House Democratic counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, made waves during his New York district's primary after he invested millions of his estimated $253 million net worth to his campaign. The heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, Goldman is set to be among the richest members of Congress. He won his primary against three progressive challengers who effectively cancelled each other out. The AIPAC-backed Goldman, who says he is raising his children in a modern Orthodox tradition, was buoyed by the United Democracy Project Super PAC donating significant funds to a non-affiliated Super PAC, which in turn attacked Niou over her Israel positions. His newly drawn district covers liberal parts of Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn with heavily Orthodox populations.

• Ohio Republican Max Miller, a former Donald Trump aide who earned the former president's enthusiastic endorsement, joins Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff as one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress after Lee Zeldin lost his bid to become New York governor. The 33-year-old Miller, whose mother and father both come from powerful families in the local Jewish community, ran to succeed Republican Trump critic Rep. Anthony Gonzales.

• Ohio Democrat Greg Landsman has long been a supporter of Israeli civil society organizations that support marginalized youth. The Democratic Majority for Israel and Jewish Democratic Council of America-endorsed Landsman has focused his campaign on education access based on his career as a nonprofit leader and public educator. He also holds a master's degree in theology from Harvard and participated in the Wexner Heritage Program for Jewish leaders, further citing his Jewish identity as a key force behind his career on the Cincinnati city council. He defeated Rep. Steve Chabot, a favorite of AIPAC and the RJC who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.

One of the most notable additions to the national political scene will be newly-elected Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who handily defeated the fiery, ultra-conservative state senator Doug Mastriano. Elected Pennsylvania’s Attorney General in 2017, Shapiro was attacked by the anti-Semitic Mastriano for sending his 4 children to the same Hebrew Day School he attended when he was a youngster, claiming that because the school’s tuition of nearly $40,000 per student, Shapiro was “obviously out-of-step with average Christian Pennsylvanians.” Shapiro and his wife Lori, who met at the Akiba Hebrew Day School more than 30 years ago, maintain a kosher home.

2022 was an election of many firsts:

• Arkansas:

  Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) – First elected female governor of Arkansas

  Leslie Rutledge (R) – First female lieutenant governor of Arkansas

• California:

  Alex Padilla (D) – First elected Latino senator from California

  Robert Garcia (D) – First out LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress

  Rob Bonta (D) – First elected Filipino American attorney general of California

  Shirley Weber (D) – First elected Black secretary of state of California

  Connecticut:

  Stephanie Thomas (D) – First Black female secretary of state of Connecticut

• Florida:

  Maxwell Frost (D) – First Gen Z member of Congress (He’s 25 years old, born in 1997)

  Illinois:

  Delia Ramirez (D) – First Latina member of Congress from Illinois

  Eric Sorensen (D) – First out LGBTQ member of Congress from Illinois

  Maryland:

  Wes Moore (D) – First Black governor of Maryland

  Anthony Brown (D) – First Black attorney general of Maryland

  Aruna Miller (D) – First Asian American lieutenant governor of Maryland

  Massachusetts:

  Maura Healey (D) – First out lesbian governor in US history; first out LGBTQ governor of Massachusetts; first elected female governor of Massachusetts

  Andrea Campbell (D) – First Black female attorney general of Massachusetts

  Michigan:

  Shri Thanedar (D) – First Indian American member of Congress from Michigan

  John James (R) – First Black Republican elected to Congress from Michigan

  New York:

  Kathy Hochul (D) – First elected female governor of New York

  George Santos (R) – Wins the first House election (versus Robert Zimmerman) that featured two out LGBTQ nominees

  Ohio:

  Marcy Kaptur (D) – Once she is sworn in next year, she will be the longest serving woman in congressional history

  Oklahoma:

  Markwayne Mullin (R) – First Native American senator from Oklahoma in 100 years (Robert Owen served from 1907-1924)

  Pennsylvania:

  Summer Lee (D) – First Black female member of Congress from Pennsylvania

  Austin Davis (D) – First Black lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania

  Vermont:

  Becca Balint (D) – First woman to represent Vermont in Congress; first out LGBTQ member of Congress from Vermont

  Charity Clark (D) – First female attorney general of Vermont

It should also be noted that voters in California, Michigan and Vermont chose to enshrine abortion protections in their state constitutions. Voters in Kentucky - where abortion is currently banned - rejected an amendment that would have said there was no right to the procedure at the state level. These results, which came just months after the U.S. Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to abortion, showed that when asked directly, a broad cross section of Americans want to protect abortion access. As the Supreme Court decision began to fade from the headlines, Republicans who support abortion restrictions tried to shift the political conversation to what they believed would be more favorable ground like economic issues and crime.

What they had not considered - or believed - was that the fate of democracy was also on the ballot . . . as well as the FPOTUS, Donald J. Trump. Now the finger-pointing begins. Trump believes that Republican losses were due mostly to a string of candidates not loyal enough to his “big lie” strategy as to deserve victory. Republican insiders are more wont to blame Florida Senator Rick Scott (who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, termed the election a “complete disappointment” for Republicans, blamed the losses on low voter turnout on Election Day. Others blamed Scott himself, for helping select some of the most deeply flawed candidates in recent memory.

(It also helped that in what turned out to be a risky - though grand political chess move - Democratic insiders decided to make significant contributions to the most vocal, right-wing pro-trump candidates in various primaries. The idea behind the scheme was to persuade Republican primary voters to send their most extreme candidates to the general election, with the hope that swing voters wouldn't be able to stomach them, and instead vote for the Democratic candidate. As things turned out - especially in races for senate seats and governorships, their strategy worked quite well.)

In both the House and Senate, current Minority Leaders - Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy - could likely face their own living hell. Already, the FPOTUS has told reporters that McConnell a “lousy leader” and thrown his support behind Florida Senator Scott. Conveniently, Scott is rumored to be mulling a presidential run against Trump in 2024. On the House side, despite the fact that no reputable news source has made the call giving Republicans a razor-thin victory, Republicans have begun jockeying for leadership roles under the assumption that they will be able to seize power. Some House Freedom Caucus members are outright opposed to making McCarthy the next Speaker - a position he has been dreaming of for many years. Other members of the caucus are demanding concessions from him that would greatly water down his power as speaker . . . should he realize that dream. These concessions could include appointing such right-wing crazies as Marjorie Taylor Green (GA), Matt Gaetz (FL) and Paul Gosar (AZ) to the most powerful committees . . . if not posts as committee chairs. (MJT easily won reelection 65.8%-30.0% in Georgia’s 14th District; Gaetz 67.8%-32.2% in Florida’s 1st District; Gosar ran unopposed in Arizona’s 9th.) No matter what the case, the Republicans will begin the 118th Congress a party and a caucus at odds with one another.

Word has it that this coming Tuesday (November 15), DJT, the man of Perpetual Promotion, will announce his intention of running for POTUS in 2024. Perhaps he believes that once he throws his hairpiece into the ring, the DOJ will have to stop investigating his innumerable deceptions and didoes. Perhaps he believes that there’s far more money to be made running for office than submitting to legal writs. Then too, perhaps he is just as self-deluded as he seems. Whatever may be the case, I believe that his shelf life as leader of the Republican Party is closing in on its expiration date.

Indeed, the Red Wave he has so long predicted has turned out to be merely a trickle.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Priceless: The Essays of David Dalin

October 30, 2020

Priceless: The Essays of David Dalin

When you stop and think about it, it should come as no surprise that American Jewish history is still a relatively new academic field.  Then too, American history itself, as compared to, let’s say, Egyptian, or Greek or even Russian history, is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy.  The first Jews did not make it to America until 1654; the first to write about the Jewish presence, and contributions to this new land didn’t seriously put pen to paper until the 1930s.  And that historian, Hebrew Union College’s Jacob Rader Marcus (1896-1995) was originally a world-renowned scholar of the Jews of the Medieval World. In a very real sense, for those engaged in studying, research and writing of American Jewish history, Dr. Marcus is the father/mentor of us all. (Ironically, the rabbi I grew up with, Morton A. Bauman [1912-1993] served as Dr. Marcus’ student assistant/editor for his first book in 1937; I, in turn was his student assistant/editor for one of his last books, 1981’s The American Jewish Woman, A Documentary History.

Among the truly gifted and prodigious students and academic descendants of Dr. Marcus are Lance Sussman, Gary Zola (the longtime director of the Jacob R. Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (and my former upstairs neighbor), Jonathan Sarna (the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University - and my one-time cantor), and David Dalin, my dear friend and fellow Californian, and easily one of the current generation’s finest and most illuminating scholars in the field of American Jewish history.

Over the past 40 or so years, Professor Dalin, Senior Research Fellow at Brandeis University and a member of the academic advisory and editorial board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, has written more than a dozen fascinating books including The Myth of Hitler's Pope, The Presidents of the United States and the Jews, Harold Stassen: The Life and Perennial Candidacy of the Progressive Republicans and Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan (which was nominated for the National Jewish Book Award for best biography), as well as dozens upon dozens of trenchant, eminently readable essays on virtually every aspect of the American Jewish experience.

Dr. Dalin’s (who was also ordained as a Conservative Rabbi at JTS in 1980 latest book is entitled Jews and American Public Life, (2022, Academic Studies Press) It is a collection of 16 of his most thoughtful essays published over the past four decades. Subtitled Essays on American Jewish History and Politics, this work admirably showcases the extent of Dalin’s wide-ranging academic interests and scholarly passions. Divided into 7 parts, Dalin’s essays deal with the lives and accomplishments of such notables as Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court, and baseball superstars Hank Greenberg and pitcher Sandy Koufax (to date the only Jewish members of the Baseball Hall of Fame). Of far greater interest - at least to this reader - are Dalin’s essays in which he “reintroduces” us to such national treasures as:

• Judge Mayer Sulzberger (1843-1923), longtime judge of the court of common pleas in Philadelphia, communal leader par excellent and likely best best known American Jew of his time;

• Louis Marshall (1856-1929), preeminent corporate, constitutional and civil rights lawyer, advisor to presidents, conservationist, one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee as well as an early director of the NAACP, and

• Cyrus Adler (1867-1940), President of Dropsie College, longtime Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a communal leader instrumental in the rescue and job-placement of refugee Jewish scholars from Hitler’s Europe, and without a doubt, the greatest Jewish bibliophile in American history;

Elsewhere in this brief (287 pages) volume, Dalin focuses attention on the critical role American Jews have played in the historic debate over the wall separating Church and State, and the now forgotten time when Nazis planned to stage a march in the largely Jewish suburb of Skokie, just outside Chicago. Dalin’s eye for - and understanding of - the drama of American politics and the role Jews have played in it - as Republicans (which a majority of American Jews were until FDR) and Democrats as well as Socialists and progressives - is first-rate; he has intimate knowledge of the cast, a highly developed understanding of its script, and an unceasing curiosity about what it all means.

To read Dr. Dalin’s collection of essays is to be filled with both awe and pride at just how much Jewish attorneys, communal leaders, philanthropists - even athletes - have contributed to American greatness. As a people, we have spent eons debating and disagreeing with one another about virtually everything under the sun; indeed, even our greatest literary work, Talmud Bavli, has been called “an eternal argument between one generation and another” And yet, we have long been guided by the sage Hillel’s dictum ah tifrosh min ha-tzibor , namely, ‘Never separate yourself from the community,’ in order to create a place where all - regardless of religion, ethnicity or political position - may seek a better, more humane future.

David Dalin’s essays are priceless; his research and knowledge inexhaustible; his powers of communication both accessible and entertaining. Indeed, he is one of the best and brightest historians in what is, when all is said and done, a relatively new field of academic inquiry.

As we say in Hebrew, Mazal tov v’yishar koakh . . . “Congratulations, and may your power be increased.”

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Are Medical Ethics an Oxymoron?

              Hippocrates (460-370 B.C .E.)

The other day, while standing in a supermarket checkout line, a fellow standing behind me heard the cashier greet me by saying “How ya doin Doc?” The fellow asked me “Are you a doctor? You look like one.” (I was clad in a blue pinstripe suit, maroon tie and matching show hankie, topped off with a Panama hat.) “Sort of,” I said to the man, who was wearing a tank-top sporting colorful tats from shoulder-to-wrist.

“What’s that mean. . . sort of? he asked. “I work in the field of medical ethics,” I replied, waiting for what, after nearly 30 years, is a pretty common response. “Isn’t that kinda contradictory?” he asked, a toxic grin on his face. “You mean like oxymoronic?” I asked. His face turned blank, as if he were wondering whether or not I had just called him a moron.

“So tell me,” he said as I started to insert my debit card into the reader, “what do you think of this Dr. Fauci?”

“I think he’s one of the greatest, most brilliant and humble people on the planet,” I said, giving him a broad grin.  “And what do you think about him?” I asked.

“I think he’s killed more people than just about anybody in history,” he said . . . just challenging me to get into an argument.

“And how is that?” I asked.  “I have always considered him to be a most honorable fellow.”

“Don’t you know?  He’s the guy who created COVID-19 in some Chinese laboratory just so he could make billions from selling a phony cure.”

That’s where the conversation ended.  Fortunately, the cashier had completed his task, loaded up my recyclable bags, and said “see you next time, Doc.”  He imperceptibly jerked his head in  the direction of the fellow behind me as if to say “jeez . . . what a moron!” At least it didn’t come from me.

I learned a long time ago never to get into an argument with an idiot . . . or a conspiracy buff . . . especially when it comes to an area where I know a thing or two.  I have neither the time to bang my head against a brick wall, nor any particular love of concussions.

Hippocrates, widely considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine, laid down the first principle of medical ethics:  primum non nocere (hoc est, “First, do no harm”). Over many centuries and innumerable plagues and pandemics, an inviolate code of ethics has attached itself to the healing arts.  The modern field of medical ethics owes a great deal to the Third Reich, whose doctors, it was discovered during the post-war “Doctors Trial” (officially called United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al), held in Nuremberg at war’s end, of the grossly inhumane “medical procedures” that were carried out on human beings without their knowledge or consent.  So breathtakingly shocking were the results of these 12 trials, that a new field - medical ethics - was born.

The 4 most overarching principles of this field of medicine are:

• Autonomy (Respect a person’s right to chose what’s right for them);

• Non-maleficence (Do no harm);

• Beneficence (All choices for a patient are made with the intent to do good). and

• Justice (Treat and provide care fairly to all patients).   

For close to 30 years, I have served as a member of an “Institutional Review Board” (IRB), a group made up of physicians, scientists, pharmacologists and multidisciplinary academics, who are charged with safeguarding both the rights and the safety of those who participate in clinical trials (medical research). Personally, I attend a minimum of 2 teleconferences each week, during which we review anywhere between 3 and 15 new medical trials, research modifications, and what are called “continuing reviews.” it represents a tremendous amount of research and work, but ultimately is as rewarding (and demanding) as anything we have ever done.

At any given teleconference, we might be dealing with studies involving multiple myeloma (a dangerous form of cancer), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS - “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), Crohn’s Disease (“Terminal Ileitis”), Osteogenesis Imperfecta (“Brittle Bone Disease”) or Acromegaly (a rare disease resulting from excessive production of growth hormone) or hundreds of others. Before we begin our meetings, we must swear that we have no financial conflicts of interest with the clinics, corporations or universities engaged in research . . . just to make sure that everything is on the up-and-up.

Make no mistake about it: creating new drugs and medical devices, or seeking to determine if an FDA (Food and Drug Administration) drug can effectively be used for a non-approved purpose, is a lengthy and extremely expensive proposition. For every Viagra (Erectile Dysfunction), Remicade (Crohn’s Disease), Celebrex (Osteoarthritis) or Synthroid (hypothyroidism) which rake in billions upon billions of dollars, there are literally thousands which will never earn a penny . . . let alone receive FDA approval. Sometimes, the research money is provided by ”big pharma”; sometimes, it comes from the Federal government.

When done properly, clinical trials can take years, and be painfully slow. And like it or not, this is just the way things should and must go.  Short-cuts can lead to medical catastrophes.  Who remembers the “Thalidomide babies” tragedy of the 1950s? Research on Thalidomide had begun to show the drug’s effectiveness in alleviating nausea in pregnant women, and many physicians started prescribing the drug off-label as a treatment for morning sickness. Not long after Thalidomide started being used for this purpose, physicians and scientists began observing birth defects in children born to mothers who had taken Thalidomide during their pregnancy; studies showed that exposure was particularly dangerous for infants born to mothers who had used the drug approximately 20—34 days post-fertilization. Common birth defects seen in these children included deletion of the ears, deafness, severe underdevelopment or absence of the arms, defects in the femur and tibia (bones of the legs), and many more. (Today, Thalidomide is still being prescribed . . . but for the treatment or prevention of certain skin conditions related to Hansen's disease (once known as leprosy) and to treat a certain type of cancer called multiple myeloma (cancer of mature plasma cells in the bone marrow). But back in the day however, Thalidomide had not gone through nearly as extensive research and rigorous oversight as it has in the couple of generations.

But frequently, when a disease hits close to home - one which profoundly changes one’s way of life, such as with paralysis, memory loss, or one which could lead to early death - such as COVID19 - people demand that the medical ethics community throw oversight rules out the window and provide assistance . . . even if the drug or device is not approved . . . or worse, breaks the first principle of medical ethics, by “doing harm.”

The best - and most recent - example of this came not from the CDC, FDA or any researcher of note, but rather from the FPOTUS, who flatly announced to the world that he recommended taking the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19. And despite a rapid and all-but unanimous thumbs-down from the medical and scientific community, Trump’s friends in the alt-press community actually touted “research” which “proved” that the medicine could increase survival rates by 200%. (This was actually posited in an edition of the USA Sun which, by the way, is a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.  Surprise surprise!)

 As a result of increasing pressure from patients (and families) of those suffering from serious, debilitating and/or lethal diseases, the FDA has begun approving the use of medical treatments with drugs which, even though likely to be safe, have not yet proven to be efficacious. Two examples:

• The agency recently approved a treatment for A.L.S., (“Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), a fatal neurological disorder, despite questions about whether the drug, called Relyvrio, will extend patients’ lives or slow the progression of their disease. Because the drug appears safe, the agency reasoned that “given the serious and life-threatening nature of A.L.S. and the substantial unmet need, this level of uncertainty is acceptable in this instance.” The F.D.A. could withdraw the drug’s approval at a later date if ongoing confirmatory trials showed poor results.

• In 2021, the F.D.A. issued a controversial approval of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, through one of its programs to speed access to new treatments, called “accelerated approval.” An advisory committee for the agency determined that there wasn’t strong evidence that the drug worked, but the F.D.A. gave the green light anyway, to the delight of some patients and advocacy groups.

There is also an approval rating that the FDA can grant a drug or device, which can make it approvable for “Humanitarian Use Only.” We see these from time to time; they are generally reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and are closely scrutinized before being granted. This does not mean that the Hippocratic Oath has been cast onto the trash heap; rather it points to medicine’s ability to balance science with compassion. This gives me no pause.

What does concern, however, me is that increasingly, pressure from pharmaceutical companies, families and even regulators (such as the FDA) is becoming the bedrock of a new trend: prioritizing access to unproven medical products over gathering evidence that they safely work. As the noted bioethicist Dr. Allison Bateman House, Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, notes recently in a New York Times op-ed piece, If this trend continues, it could result in people increasingly using and paying for ineffective and possibly unsafe medical products. In the worst case, it could mark a return to an era when drug-related harms occurred under insufficient regulation.

In a time when increasingly, the findings and lessons of specialists and experts in many fields - and not just medicine - are being cast aside in favor of the fact-free supporters of hidden agendas, there is reason for concern.

Medical ethics are not an oxymoron; they are the wall which separates fact from fiction, and Hippocrates from Dr. Mengele . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Sein Kampf

This week’s essay was supposed to be about medical ethics; specifically whether or not it is ethical to expedite clinical trials for drugs dealing with such lethal diseases as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and Lewy Body Dementia. At about the time I had written the first 1,200 words of the piece (tentatively entitled Are Medical Ethics an Oxymoron?)  a story about the latest asininity coming from the mouth of our FPOTUS came across the wire (as we used to say in pre-Google times) which forced me to change intellectual lanes. Hopefully, the original piece will run next week. And so, instead of Are Medical Ethics an Oxymoron? we move to Sein Kampf (German for “His Struggle”).

Yesterday, the FPOTUS, Donald J. Trump. ,offered an absolutely foreboding message on his Truth Social  alt-tech social media platform warning “U.S. Jews” to “get their act together” and be more appreciative—“before it is too late.” He even claimed that his own approval rating is so high in Israel that he could “easily” be the country’s prime minister. “No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump said in the deranged post.  “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”   

What in hell does “. . . before it is too late” mean?  Too late for what?  Is he pissed because increasingly, more and more American Jews are reverting to their Democratic roots, and voting for pro-choice progressives and candidates who favor enacting gun safety laws and shoring up Social Security and Medicare?  Is he warning American Jews that because he moved our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, that we should support him through thick and thin?

"If that’s not an anti-Semitic threat, I don’t know what to call it," tweeted Laurence Tribe, law professor emeritus at Harvard.

Regardless of Trump’s specific meaning - as if even he knows the import of his own words - it is but one more addition to a repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes he’s tried to leverage against the Jewish people . . . something he no doubt learned at his father’s knee.  Makes one wonder what his Jewish son-in-law Jared, Jewish daughter Ivanka and Jewish grandchildren (Arabella Rose, Joseph Frederick and Theodore James) think about their זיידע - zeideh - Yiddish for “grandpa.”   

If this is not an anti-Semitic threat, I don’t know what to call it. This is not the first time that Trump has attacked Jews for not supporting him politically or financially, and saying they should back him over policies toward Israel.

A year before his failed reelection bid in 2020, Trump said: “I think any Jewish people who would vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."

At a White House Hanukkah party in 2018, Trump told guests that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, had great affection for Israel: "And they go there and they love your country. They love your country. And they love this country. That’s a good combination, right?” Of course, what was not said is that Christian Nationalists like Pence firmly believe that in order for the Messiah to return, all Jews must be gathered back to Jerusalem (aka “The Holy Land”) in order to either accept Jesus as their Lord or face immediate extinction. (I for one, will await the coming of the Messiah [for the first time] by doing as much as I can to make this world as sane, peaceful and holy a place as possible for the sake of all people of all religions.)

In going public with his loopy, potentially dangerous post, Donald Trump reveals an anti-Semitic, narrow-minded understanding (or lack thereof) of American Jews. He seems to believe that the single-most important (if not, indeed, only) issue American Jews care about is the safety of Israel; and that therefore, whoever is “best for Israel”, must be the person we will support. This shows a gross misunderstanding. While Israel is certainly an issue of great importance to the American Jewish community, it is by no means the only issue which motivates our vote. As I have been preaching for more than 45 years, check out candidates based on ten or twelve issues (healthcare, climate, voting and civil rights, women, and curbing gun violence among others) facing America. Whoever is, in your estimation, best for America and the world at large will, unquestionably, be best for Israel and the Jewish people.

Just as an anti-Semite can never be good for Israel, so too that individual can never be good for America and all she stands for.

For those Americans who are Jewish, please realize that our future cannot - and never will be - secure in the hands of any individual or party which is incapable of understanding us in the totality of our being and our history . . . that In going public with his moronic post, Donald Trump reveals an anti-Semitic, narrow-minded understanding of American Jews.

Never trust those whose understanding of American Jews is narrow or parochial. Our love, respect and support of and for Israel is just one part of who we are. Our concerns are not always your concerns; the political positions we take are not always the positions you assume we will take. This shows a gross misunderstanding. While Israel is certainly an issue of great importance to the American Jewish community, it is by no means the only issue upon which we base our vote.

To Donald Trump and those who believe that the only thing which concerns American Jews is Israel, remember one thing: המאבק שלנו אינו בהכרח זהה למאבק שלך, Hebrew for “Our struggle is not necessarily the same as yours.”

This is getting extremely serious. Former President Trump, who has made a career out of communicating with his core followers via dog whistles, has begun increasing the decibel level to that of a marching band. And what’s even more disturbing is that none, nary a single prominent Republican, has uttered so much as a sentence - let alone a syllable - of condemnation. How can they live with themselves? Is recapturing then maintaining political power more important than destroying our very system of government?

Is there not a single sane Republican office holder who remembers, let alone can (and will) quote the late Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

I Don't Care!

(Note: Lest any of you, my dear, constant readers, think that yours truly is in serious need of a frontal lobotomy, please understand that this week’s piece is serious [though silly] satire. Were it hand-written, the ink would be purely acidic . . . the penmanship of the anonymous troll, nearly indecipherable.)

 Herschel Walker (R) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D)

Less than a week ago, it was revealed that Herschel Walker the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from the great state of Georgia got a woman pregnant, and actually paid for her abortion back in 2009. At first, Walker, the former gridiron great, denied knowing the woman and categorically denied any and all charges. Then it came out that not only had he written out a personal check in the amount of $700.00 for the abortion, but that he actually has a child by this woman. Now mind you, Mr. Walker is a staunchly pro-life MAGA Republican who proudly carries an endorsement from none other than FPOTUS, Donald J. Trump. And you had better believe that ultra-left Democrats and their liberal media buddies have been calling Mr. Walker - who believes that life begins at conception - a hypocrite. They are doing everything in their power to convince Georgia voters that Walker should resign from the race . . . thus ceding victory to the incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock.

Well, as a staunchly anti-abortion MAGA Republican - one who firmly believes that abortion for ANY reason whatsoever is murder - I have but one thing to say about the Walker revelation: I DON’T CARE! It’s not that I think the lamestream media is making all this up about Herschel . . . I JUST DON’T CARE!! I believe deeply in the sanctity of life and oppose all abortions – except for this one, which I will accept to prevent it from costing my party control of the Senate. As a fellow writer noted the other day, “I don’t care if Walker oversaw the construction of a moon-size space station that blew up the 2-billion-person planet of Alderaan, then later got in an argument with his son and chopped his right hand off . . . We have to secure that Georgia Senate seat so we can stop President Joe Biden’s immoral agenda!“ I’m going to have to side with Walker on this abortion issue and give him a Mulligan, because I want my party in power and believe it’s a sin to use the word “hypocrisy.”

Back in the day when I was a card carrying Commie (well, actually a garden variety liberal), I remember reading the epic Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf and coming across a character known as “the monster Grundel,” who was described as “accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind.” I’m sure that any of those accursed, overly-educated libtards who have read it will presume that Grundel is really Herschel in disguise . . . . “a walker in darkness," who is "wearing God's anger" and "lacking in joy" because he has inherited the curse the Biblical Cain. Shows you how much these educated twits think they know!

It bothers me not a whit electing Herschel Walker to the United States Senate despite the fact that even he has no idea of how many children he has fathered, has admitted to having a violent streak and having suffered from bi-polar disorder. . . or that he, like our once-and-forever POTUS doesn’t always tell the truth . . . . just so long as his election allows Mitch McConnel to replace Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader and elevates Marco Rubio to the Chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee (this assumes that he defeats Rep. Val Demings for reelection . . . and everyone knows that Demings, who was a uniformed cop for more than a quarter-century and served 4 years as Sheriff of Orange County [Orlando] supports defunding the police and is squishy soft on crime.

If there could be background music to this screed of mine, it would be that wonderful song sung by Judy Garland in The Good Old Summertime (MGM, 1949), simply entitled I DON’T CARE! Originally written in 1905 with words by John Lennox and music by Harry O. Sutton for Eva Tanguay (1878-1946), “The girl who made vaudeville famous,” its opening lyrics express to a “T” precisely how I am feeling about the seeming inconsistencies of such god-fearing MAGA Republicans as Herschel Walker, Marco Rubio, Matt Gaetz. Lauren Boebert and Lindsey Graham:

They say I'm crazy
Got no sense
But I don't care
They may or may not mean offense
But I don't care
You see, I'm sort of independent
I am my own superintendent
And my star is on the ascendent
That's why I don't care

I don't care, I don't care
What they may think of me
I'm happy-go-lucky, they say that I'm plucky
Contented and carefree
I don't care I don't care
If I do get a mean and stony stare
If I'm not successful
It won't be distressful
Cause I don't care . . . .

It really doesn’t matter one iota to us MAGA folks how many twice- and thrice-divorced, AK-47 toting, closet-hiding Republicans proclaim themselves to be to be the purest of the pure. I DON’T CARE! . . . just so long as they take back the House and Senate. We pine and pray for the day when the Speaker’s gravel is handed over to Ohio Representative “Gym” Jordan (who will be replacing that spineless, wimpy RINO Kevin McCarthy); we will cheer his first two acts: (1) making Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz committee chairs and (2) eliminating the Jan. 6th Committee.

Like the many Republicans who’ve rushed in to stick up for Walker in the wake of the abortion news, I DON’T CARE if the former football star is an ancient, trans-dimensional, shape-shifting entity of pure evil that takes the form of a clown named Pennywise and terrorizes a small town in Maine. I want control of the Senate, and I’m sure Walker regrets any past desire to feed on humans.

Listen up: there’s only ONE issue that  should matter this November . . . and November 2024: putting an end to the Democrat Party.  Winning at any cost is the thing.  And, if we lose, we will proclaim that victory was stolen.

Anything else . . . I DON’T CARE!! 

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

How Low Can You Go?

Although DeSantis, Abbott & Ducey may sound like the name of a high-tone law firm, it is of course, anything but. The three principals are, the MAGA-Republican governors of, respectively, Florida, Texas, and Arizona. They pretty much stand together on the major political issues of the day (they are all vehemently pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and anti-immigrant), and each harbors thoughts about someday running for POTUS. And oh yes, all three find the greatest amount of political comfort among the most ardent followers of Donald Trump. The mere contemplation of the lengths the three are willing to go in order to impress this growing gaggle of anti-(small d) democrats, is enough to make a good night’s sleep next to impossible.

Day-by-day, hour-by-hour, the story about how the three - especially Florida’s DeSantis, the man who seeks to out-Trump Trump - have, through trickery, been transporting mostly Venezuelan migrants to places like Martha’s Vineyard, New York City, and Vice President Harris’ own front yard in Washington, D.C., it grows and grows. The three have become exporters of migrant misery in order to put America’s border policy woes back on the front burner, thus reinvigorating the MAGA-Republican’s political playbook just in time for the 2022 midterm elections. The obvious political strategy is that when you haven’t got a positive platform to run on, stick to what you do best: label everyone on the other side of the political fence “radical libs,” “socialists” or “anti-Americans” and oh yes, don’t forget to blame the nation’s many intractable woes on “illegal aliens.”

Besides being what The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols correctly called “a sadistic political stunt,” DeSantis’ ploy could well get him indicted . . . which likely wouldn’t bother his political followers one iota. For a man who graduated magna cum laude from Yale and earned a juris doctor at Harvard, DeSantis loves coming across to his fan base as the reincarnation of “Lonesome Rhodes,” the raucous hayseed turned right-wing demagogue, played to haunting perfection by newcomer Andy Griffith in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd.” In the film, “Lonesome,” who on mic or before the television camera regularly proclaims things like “The family that prays together, stays together,” is anything but a Bible-toting Christian. In reality, he is a truly mean-spirited miscreant who considers his adoring fans to be nothing more than cretinous fools and idiots. Eventually, he gets his comeuppance when Marcia Jeffries (marvelously played by Patricia Neal), the woman who made him a super-star, leaves the microphone on at the end of a broadcast, thus ruining Lonesome’s career when he is finally unmasked as a total fraud; a man motivated only by money and his own egotistical thirst for power.

In chartering 2 planes to take upwards of 50 Venezuelan asylees from Texas (not Florida as was at first mistakenly assumed) up North to Martha’s Vineyard, DeSantis found himself quickly becoming the butt of late-night jokes, inquiries into the legality of what he had done, and even the wrath of the FPOTUS. Mind you, Donald Trump’s outrage had nothing to do with moral revulsion at his protege’s using human beings as unsuspecting pawns for a political attack. Instead, Trump has been telling allies and confidants that he’s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he’s allowed to steal the ex-president’s mantle as both media star, and undocumented-immigrant-basher-in-chief. Trump and his advisors are smart enough to realize that DeSantis’ ploy is intended to be a shot across the bow of the Former President’s plans for running in 2024, and intend to do something about it.  What that “something” is, is unknown, considering just how full to overflowing Trump’s political dance card is these days.

As much as other Republicans may think poorly of just how low DeSantis has sunk, few - if indeed any - have gone public with their thoughts and/or condemnation. It is once again pointing out the moral and political bankruptcy of just about every Republican within range of a camera. Need an example? Here’s Texas Senator Ted Cruz - who like the highly-educated DeSantis is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law, proclaiming that the law is "clear" and a citizen could "easily be arrested" for moving migrants from one state to another, and yet still stating that he supports the Republican governors’ doing it: "I commend Greg Abbott for sending the immigrants to these blue cities, I commend Ron DeSantis for doing so, and they need to do more," Cruz said. "Tomorrow, Martha's Vineyard needs a hundred. The next day they need two hundred. The next day they need a thousand," he concluded. Got that? Harvard should rescind his law degree!

So far as I know, about-to-become-former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney is the sole Republican to utter so much as a single syllable against the likes of DeSantis, Abbott and Ducey. Have they no sense of what is moral, ethical or legal? Are they so fearful of losing the support of Donald Trump or the MAGA-Republican base as to remain mute in the face of gross inhumanity, not to mention the most vile form of  mendacity?

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell − who's married to an immigrant, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao − acknowledged at a news conference ". . . there's been a good deal of talk about what some of the governors have done to transport illegal immigrants up to other parts of the country. I personally thought it was a good idea. If you added up all of the [immigrants] who've been taken to Chicago or Washington or Martha's Vineyard, it would be fewer than people down in Texas have to deal with on a daily basis."

If there is any justice left in America, Ron DeSantis should be in a world of legal - not to mention moral and ethical - jeopardy. There are questions aplenty to be asked and investigated:

• About DeSantis’ use of federal COVID-19 dollars to fund his Martha’s Vineyard (and now Delaware) stunt;

• About the relationship between the DeSantis-for Governor campaign and Vertol Systems, a Destin, Florida-based company which is a major Republican contributor, that was paid more than $615,000 to charter the two planes which flew the 50 migrants (lawfully awaiting their asylum hearings) from Texas (not Florida) to Massachusetts. (n.b.: The Vertol Systems website link is suddenly no longer operable.)

• About whether or not DeSantis conned the migrants into signing consent documents holding both him and the State of Florida harmless from any legal action.  (As a medical ethicist, I can tell you that unless an informed consent document is written so that anyone capable of reading can understand it, it simply is not legal.  It also has to be written in the language which the subject is most literate.) 

Bexar County (Texas) Sheriff Javier Salazar has launched a criminal investigation into DeSantis’ cruel stunt. The decision comes on the heels of immigration rights groups and Democrats accusing Republicans of exploiting vulnerable migrants for political points by promising them jobs and housing, only to fly them to an island off the coast of Massachusetts that was not warned people needing help were coming.

Salazar, sheriff for the county where San Antonio is located, said it is too early in the investigation to name suspects or know what laws were broken. But he said he is talking to an attorney representing some of the migrants who have already filed a class-action suit and trying to figure out what charges should be made and against whom.

“We want to know what was promised to them. What, if anything, did they sign? Did they understand the document that was put in front of them if they signed something? Or was this strictly a predatory measure?” Salazar said.

For all his efforts, it would appear that Ron DeSantis has wound up being on the wrong side of Donald Trump. According to a report from Rolling Stone, Trump felt DeSantis not only stole his thunder, but also his idea to ship illegal migrants into heavily Democratic areas of the country. Rolling Stone writers Aswin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley reported they spoke to two people in Trump’s orbit in the days after the migrants were flown to the ritzy resort island:

Trump has fumed over all the praise DeSantis’ action has been receiving in influential conservative circles lately - such as on right-wing media like Fox News - and has privately accused DeSantis of doing this largely to generate a 2024 polling boost for himself among GOP voters.

It seems to me that Ron DeSantis’ sights had better be on November’s gubernatorial race before he starts drooling over 2024; goodness knows how many Florida Hispanic voters are going to either vote for Democrat Charlie Crist or simply stay away from the polls, as a means for expressing their anger and outrage at the man who used to be called Trump’s ‘Mini-Me.’

Time and again, “Rambo” DeSantis has proven that he will do or say anything that can put him at the top of the MAGA-Republican list of favorites. He may be well-educated, but clearly is none too smart . . . and has an utter lack of scruples.

To paraphrase the old Chubby Checker song:

Every Rambo boy and girl
All around the Rambo world
Gonna do the Rambo rock
All around the Rambo crock

Ron be Rambo, Ron be thick
Ron go unda Rambo shtick
All around the Rambo rock
Hey, let's do the Rambo crock

Rambo lower now
Rambo lower now
How low can you go?

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

A Memo to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

TO: Marjorie Taylor Greene

FROM: Kurt Franklin Stone

RE: America’s Most Asinine Political Troll

Congratulations MJT: you’ve hit absolute rock bottom. Within hours of President Joseph Biden’s speech condemning MAGA Republicans and the danger they pose to the future of American Democracy, you had the gall to compare him to Hitler . . . and then run an amateurishly-doctored video of the speech with the president wearing a Hitler moustache along with a backdrop of Swastikas and a soundtrack provided by Der führer. Even for you - who have accused George Soros and the Rothchild family of causing forest fires in California via lasers from outer space, and proclaiming that the January 6 insurrection was the work of Black Lives Matter radicals (among many, many other conspiratorial whoppers) - this is going way too far.

We all know that you don’t believe for one second that Biden is Hitlerian . . . or that Democrats are pederasts involved in sex-trafficking children out of a Maryland pizza parlor. It’s all for show . . . and increasing your standing amongst your QAnon supporters. Tell me Marjorie: if Biden is Hitler how is it that you’re still receiving a biweekly paycheck in the amount of $6,692.30 (minus FICA) for your service in Congress? How is it that if Biden is Hitler you aren’t in jail . . . or a concentration camp, or that your family isn’t under arrest? Or that you are free to lie in public and post incredible, altered twaddle on the Internet? The answer is obvious: Biden isn’t a Nazi any more than the troops protecting the U.S. Capitol aren’t members of the “Gazpacho” police or that COVID vaccines are made in “Peach Tree” dishes . . as you so ignorantly called them.

Marjorie: a large majority of the American public has long known that you are an ill-lettered horse’s ass. But to liken the President of the United States to the most evil person in world history is going way too far . . . even for a miscreant like you. Has Joe Biden murdered 6 million Jews? Has his administration firebombed the House of Representatives, burned books he’s disagreed with or denied Christian children the right to attend school? (Herr Hitler did that to Jewish children.) Has the American President ordered the military to invade and take over both Canada and Mexico . . . as well as Central America? The answer, of course, is “NO!” But you wouldn’t know that for the simple reason that you learned world history not from your teachers at South Forsythe High School in Cummings, Georgia or at the University of Georgia where you earned a B.A.A. in 1996. You learned history through conspiracy theorists associated with QAnon.

Your accusing Joe Biden of being Hitler led an Israeli diplomat to condemn you to a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency - something an Israeli diplomat would never do: "I am appalled by this cynical use of Nazi imagery and Hitler comparisons by a member of the United States Congress. As we face a rise in anti-Semitic incidents, in the US and around the world, rhetoric like this only fuels the persistent threat of hatred, extremism, and violence." (It should be noted that the agency had granted the diplomat anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, as it is extraordinarily rare for an Israeli diplomat to criticize an individual American lawmaker.

The American Jewish Committee (whose new leader, Rep. Ted Deutch will take over as President next month) also commented on Twitter that the doctored video was "vile, offensive, and completely unbecoming for a member of Congress." The AJC text also called for Republican members of Congress to condemn your attack. To date, none have had the guts to do so. Talk about cowardice! I hate to think of all the goodies they are going to bestow upon you should the Republicans recapture the House; you could easily become a committee chair!

Marjorie, I really don’t know what is worse, more reprehensible or most unsettling: that you do not believe what you say or proclaim, or that you do. If it be the former, then you are an immoral opportunist; if the latter, then you have the I.Q. and scruples of a carnivorous plant.

 Whether you care or not, Marjorie, you are never going to be anything more than a footnote in American history. Your entry will be nothing more than an example of a long-forgotten, thoroughly unqualified  backbencher who accomplished virtually nothing during her brief time in Congress.

If you believe I’ve libeled you, sue me. I will no doubt have my choice of the greatest First-Amendment attorneys, all offering their services pro bono.

Good luck in your next life . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Is FPOTUS Taking a Page From General Sickles' Playbook?

Beginning Note: This week’s essay is both speculative and meant to be taken with a grain of salt. Since no one knows when or if the FPOTUS will be indicted by the DOJ . . . or the state of Georgia . . . or the State and/or City of New York . . . any discussion about what trial strategy his “legal team” (the makeup of which seems to change with every passing hour) is pure fiction. The appearance of General Daniel Sickles - a real historic character - is meant to be used as a dramatic prop . . .

In going through the literally hundreds of classified, top secret and sensitive compartmented information documents stashed away at the FPOTUS’ Mar-a-Lago residence, D.O.J lawyers and investigators came across other miscellaneous items which at first glance, seemed to be of questionable value: “love letters” from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, as well as communiqués and birthday wishes from the likes of Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Mihály Orbán. One of the items which at first seemed to be totally inconsequential was a long overdue novel borrowed from the Library of Congress written by the acclaimed Australian author Thomas Keneally (Schindler’s List, The Dickens Boy, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) entitled American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Daniel Sickles. The fact that there was any book - let alone a novel - in the vast Trump treasure trove was weird. After all, the man has never been known to be much of a reader . . . unless it’s one of his own ghost-written best-sellers.  Precisely who it was that brought the Sickles biography to FPOTUS’s attention will likely remain a mystery.  What FPOTUS ultimately found so compelling about Sickles, a former member of Congress, Union General and U.S. Ambassador to Spain (among many other things) will be surmised further down in this post.

Ever since FBI agents in casual clothes and without their guns spent nearly nine hours at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 searching through the club’s storage room, FPOTUS’ residential suite and offices, Donald Trump has been making an unglued spectacle of himself. According to a property receipt they left behind, the FBI team collected more than two dozen boxes of documents, including 11 sets of documents with classification markings. A more detailed accounting in a later court filing indicated that the FBI seized more than 100 documents marked classified, from the confidential to top secret level. Seventy-six were found in the storage room. Others were found in Trump’s office, including three documents found in desk drawers .

Trump and his team - comprised of the latest incarnation of his “inner circle” and legal advisors - have come up with more than a half-dozen excuses, accusations and weaker-than-water strategies for once again portraying him as the victim of a conspiracy masterminded by President Biden, A.G. Garland and the F.B.I. to destroy him. He and his followers have accused the F.B.I. of planting top-secret documents in the boxes they removed from the Mar-a-Lago store room; of illegally “storming” his residence(they had a legally authorized warrant) and proclaiming that the people they should be investigating are Hillary (“Lock her UP!”) Clinton and Hunter (“We’ve Got His Laptop!”) Biden.

Say what you will, but ‘45 has been getting some truly rummy legal and political advice; with the exception of his hardest of hardcore followers, his optics are worse than execrable. Increasingly, many Republican office holders and candidates who have worked oh so hard to gain his endorsement, have begun maintaining a growing silence when questioned about the whole Mar-a-Lago imbroglio. FPOTUS is obviously becoming progressively fearful of just what the future may bring; possible indictments for obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and even treason. As he sees many of his circle receiving subpoenas and thinking twice about destroying their lives and reputations on his behalf, he is becoming even more unhinged . . . and thus laughable.

One of his latest and most breathtaking demands is that he be retroactively declared the 2020 presidential election winner or be allowed to hold a "new election," for which he has been mercilessly mocked. Of course, the chances of this ever happening are absolutely none . . . or less than that. Just the other day, FPOTUS began including QAnon conspiracy theories on his “Truth Social” website. NewsGuard, a media watchdog that analyzes the credibility of news outlets, found 88 users promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on FPOTUS’ Truth Social, each to more than 10,000 followers. Of those accounts, 32 were previously banned by Twitter . . . as was Donald Trump.

Make no mistake about it: with each passing news cycle, Donald Trump is feeling more and more cornered; his many, many years of acting, evading and avoiding laws concerning his various businesses, paying taxes, and telling the truth are about to crush him. And, since he is changing lawyers like most of us change socks, his “moral albinism” (a term I coined many years ago meaning, roughly, a belief structure completely devoid of moral pigmentation), he is just about at the end of his rope. What legal strategy is going to keep him out of Leavenworth, Danbury or Ft. Dix?

Which leads us back to sordid life of Major General Sickles. . .

In his 94 year, the high-born Daniel Edgar Sickles (1819-1914) read law with former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Butler, and became a highly successful attorney-at-law; served as a member of the United States Congress from New York; a Major General in the Union Army who lost a leg and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg (the Battle of Cemetery Ridge); was the American Ambassador to Spain; and, became a favorite of two of the worst Presidents in American history: James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce. In addition to all this, he was a notorious womanizer who, in 1859, killed United States District Attorney Phillip Barton Key the son of Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner.” The younger Key was having an affair with Sickles’ wife Teresa Bagiolii (1836-1867), whom Sickles had married when she was all of 15years old.  Sickles found out about the affair, and on Sunday, February 27, 1859, intercepted Key at the corner of Madison Place N.W. and Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the White House. There, Sickles shot the unarmed Key twice, one shot directed at Key's groin. Key died about an hour later in a nearby house.

And here is where the story of Daniel Sickles may wind up playing a role in the future of Donald J. Trump: Sickles was actually acquitted of first-degree murder by a jury of his peers (all male, all white). How? He was the first person in U.S. legal history to plead innocent due to “temporary diminished capacity.” During the trial, his defense team repeatedly hammered home the fact that Key was "a confirmed, habitual adulterer" and stated that a cuckholed (a husband whose wife is unfaithful to him) has a God-given right to vengeance. Chief Defense Counsel John Graham brought up the notion of temporary insanity in his opening statement, which lasted two days, by claiming that "Sickles' provocation was so enormous that he was, from a legal point of view, insane." The jury bought it, and shortly after his acquittal, Sickles miraculously “regained” his sanity and continued living a life of privilege for another 56 years, eventually dying of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 3, 1914 in New York City.

Perhaps the mystery of why a copy of writer Thomas Keneally’s American Scoundrel wound up being amongst all the top-secret documents seized at Mar-a-Lago is as simple as this: FPOTUS and his legal team, running out of all rational options, are putting together a “diminished capacity” or “innocent by reason of insanity” defense for their celebrated client. Goodness knows, there are miles and miles of video and hundreds of thousands of journal inches to prove that for the past 40-50 years, Donald Trump has been madder than a hatter; has felt that he is completely immune from paying any and all debts . . . whether they be financial, judicial, political or the result of utter mendacity. Were he alive today, Sigmund Freud would be in a state of utter stupefaction contemplating the likes of Donald Trump.

Watch out DJT: the padded walls are closing in on you. And your legal team (whom you may or may not pay) are no match for the one that General Sickles paid most handsomely compensated; his was headed by no less a legal giant than Abraham Lincoln’s future Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. And believe me, your most current team - Alina Habba, Lindsey Halligan, and Christina Bobb - are already way over their heads.

I hope they insisted on an enormous retainer. If not, this could be the first trial in history in which both the accused and the attorneys entered joint insanity pleas . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Paul Simon's Timeless Tune

On January 19, 1977, the night before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office, thus becoming America’s 39th President, a strictly A-list pre-inaugural gala was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers rocking the house were the “alpha and omega” of world-class musical talent: Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. For her part, Franklin tore the house down with her megawatt version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Although Berlin wrote the song way back in 1918, it wasn’t heard in public until Kate Smith sang it on her number One most popular radio show on November 10, 1938. Aretha’s Franklin’s version had the pre-inaugural crowd jumping and stomping and sweating.

By comparison, Paul Simon’s choice was a much quieter, more thoughtful, pensive - even prophetic - piece musically based on one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque music: J.S. Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthews Passion (part 1, numbers 21 and 23, and part 2, number 54). Simon simply called it American Tune. It began with the words:

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused.

Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home

The song, originally released in November 1973, has been a personal favorite of both Paul Simon and his vast fan base ever since. Rolling Stone has rated it as high as #262 on its list of “The 500 greatest songs of all time.” (Somewhat ironically, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” came in at #1.) Upon his induction to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, Simon chose to sing American Tune.

In the song’s second verse, Simon amps up the feeling of civic dislocation and anomie - something which was and is as telling in 1977 as in 2022:

I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

Oh, but it's all right, it's all right

For we've lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

Oh, but it's all right, it's all right

For we've lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

The song’s bridge conveys a dream of death and of the Statue of Liberty “sailing away to sea.”

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

In addition to Simon’s impeccable, pristine guitar playing, there is his voice . . . soft, semi-mournful and melancholic. During the many years of their partnership, it was Art Garfunkel whose voice received the greatest plaudits: often referred to as heavenly, crystal clear, and otherworldly. And yet, Paul Simon was as vocally adept as his high school friend and long-time partner.

I well remember watching “Rhymin’ Simon’s” performance the night before Carter’s inauguration; tears began welling up in my eyes as the full impact of the song was nearing its muted crescendo. “Where,” I wondered” would Simon’s mythic “flight” be taking us? Would it be a chimera . . . something to be hoped or wished for but in fact be illusory or impossible to achieve, or a catastrophic crash-landing? There are songs which resonate powerfully when first we hear them, yet continue to expand with meaning and poignance through the passing years. Few songs do this with the pointed poetics of this song. It was stunning back in 1973, magnificently poignant in 1979, breathtakingly prophet in 2011, and still speaking to this American moment in 2022 better than just about any other song ever written.

Simon’s third verse puts a capstone on what, for Americans, has always been, historic reality: tomorrow.

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune

Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

At the time this song was included on Simon’s 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, he and Art Garfunkel had already broken up the act . . . although they would occasionally sing together at mass outdoor concerts over the years. On September 19, 1981, they reunited for what would become the historic “Concert in Central Park,” at which they sang American Tune as a duo. In his introduction, Garfunkel admitted that he truly regretted not having sung this song until this moment for indeed, “it is one of my very favorites . . . I truly love it.”

Much of the power of “American Tune” is in Paul Simon’s voice. It does not ring with the loud anger that runs through our time. It is mournful, as if unspooling in the candlelight of a day’s end, in the place where a person’s battles give pause until dawn. The song is searing in its tenderness, poetic in its indictment. It is political without being so. And its voices sound like truck drivers or factory workers, men and women who hustle for their daily bread while the world above them, the one of bankers and politicians, spins on indifferently.

Throughout its history, America has refracted its patriotism and its protest in music, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Neil Young’s album “Living With War.”

In their new book, “Songs of America,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw write that American history “is a story of promises made and broken, of reform and reaction — a story fundamentally shaped by the perennial struggle between what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ and our worst impulses… Through all the years of strife, we’ve been shaped not only by our words and our deeds but by our music, by the lyrics and the instrumentals that have carried us through dark days and enabled us to celebrate bright ones.”

In American Tune, Paul Simon is tired but resilient. The American dream comes with both disappointment and loss. Each generation endures its sins and crises; its diminishment and cruel realizations. It is the job, though, despite the clamor and politics, that waits at first light with the hope of reward and the fear of resignation.

American Tune is the masterwork of a modern prophet . . . one who believes that regardless of the crises and fears of today . . . there will yet be another and brighter tomorrow.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Schadenfreude

72 hours ago, I posted a piece which expressed a bit of joy at the recent political winning streak on the part of both the Biden Administration and Capitol Hill Democrats. German speakers would call this relative joy freudenfreude, which roughly translates as “finding joy in the success of others.” Freudenfreude is not as nearly well known as its antonym, schadenfreude, [literally ‘harm joy’’] which refers to the uncanny giddiness people can feel upon seeing those they cannot stomach suffer harm or defeat.  Watching the Dodgers win 10-straight is ample cause for freudenfreude; seeing the gates of Mar-a-Lago thrown open in order to permit FBI agents to carry out a federal search warrant presents many with the opportunity to engage in a smirking bout of schadenfreude.   

One wonders how former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary (“Lock Her Up!”) Clinton must be feeling these past 72 hours. Is she struggling to contain herself from gleefully raising two thumbs upward . . . or simply smiling in the knowledge that “what goes around comes around?”  Having first been introduced to Secretary Clinton and her husband nearly 45 years, (and acting as a surrogate for her in the 2016 election) I think I know her well enough to put a dollar on the former and a fiver on the latter.  “How’s that possible?” you well might ask.  “After the tens of dozens of post-Benghazi hearings, the innumerable FBI-led investigations into her using a private email server, and the innumerable, incomprehensible, calls for her imprisonment . . . how could she possibly keep a civil tongue and not shout out for joy?”  In other words, where’s the schadenfreude?  Where are the explosions of mirth, the chorus of Munchkins singing the Harold Arlen/”Yip” Harburg song which begins with the words “Ding-Dong! The witch is dead . . .”

Don’t get Secretary Clinton wrong: like President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi and all those raised with a touch of class - Secretary Clinton has neither the time, the temperament nor the taste for revenge. Justice? Decidedly so and coompleted merited.. Revenge? That comes from elsewhere. Clinton, Biden et al know - and pray - that Donald Trump will get his; that he will wind up being unmasked, sentenced, and becoming the foulest footnote in all American political history; that he will ultimately make Buchanan look like a savant, Harding a vestal virgin and Nixon a saint. .

For the past 72 hours, responsible mainstream media have been reporting on precisely what happened at Mar-a-Lago; of how the Department of Justice, after thousands of hours of investigation, went to a federal magistrate judge (now known to be Bruce Reinhart, a former federal prosecutor) for a search warrant that would give them the legal authority to enter the former POTUS’s residence in search of top secret materials which, according to the Presidential Records Act, he had no legal right to have in his private possession. We have learned that his response was to go after both the DOJ and FBI (whose director, the Yale-educated Christopher Wray was first appointed by the former POTUS ); and of how, when (not if) he is returned to office, he will seek to defund both institutions. We have seen how many of his Congressional supporters (the majority of whom wanted nothing to do with him at various times before he was elected) have prostrated themselves at his Berluti-shod feet, angrily proclaiming that he is the ultimate victim of what they have chosen to characterize as “the modern incarnation of the Gestapo” . . . or as Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert would have it, “The Gazpacho police.”

The FBI’s legal search of Mar-a-Lago has brought out tons of nasty, nasty threats and responses.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has likely dashed any hopes he has of becoming Speaker by warning A.G. Merrick Garland to " . . . get your papers in order and clear your calendar.”  What in the world does this mean? That should he become Speaker, he will run a House whose main concern is neither climate, economy nor COVID but revenge and “GOTCHA” politics.  He, like his cultish boss, is far more concerned about the past than the future.  Florida Republican Senators Rubio and Scott (the latter being the head of his party’s campaign committee) are desirous of nothing more than defunding both the DOJ and FBI. And they dare to refer to themselves as “The party of Law and Order.”  That is why I am supporting Democratic Rep (and former Chief of the Orlando Police) Val Demmings to take over Rubio’s seat: "If you don’t show up to work you get fired!”  So goes the tag-line to one of her recent campaign ads.

With each passing day, Donald Trump’s woes . . . along with his legal bills . . . continue to mount  He spent the better part of yesterday (Wednesday, August 10, 2022) taking the Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in a New York civil court investigation into his business practices.  (The only question he did answer was “Is your name Donald John Trump?”) Upon arriving at N.Y. Attorney General Latitia James’ Manhattan office, Trump told the press: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” the statement said. “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.” The man is clearly scared to death.  Above and beyond the FBI search and the N.Y, investigation of his business practices, there is also the grand jury investigation into a minimum of 3 state laws he may have broken in Georgia.  Simply stated, he is a man with a mountain of problems. One wonders how much sleep he’s getting these days and nights.

It should come as no surprise that DJT is urging his most fervid MAGA supporters to continue contributing to his legal defense fund; only time will tell just how much more he can raise.  The most worrisome issue he faces, it seems to me, is the recent court decision compelling him to release his tax returns . . . which may well prove that he is not a billionaire and that he has played face and lose with his taxes for decades.

On October 2, 2020. Merriam-Webster.com reported that searches for the word schadenfreude had increased by 30,500% on the site, making it the most popular word of the day. Why? Well, that was the day it was announced that Donald and Melania Trump had both tested positive for COVID-19. One wonders how many searches for the untranslatable German word there have been in the past 72 hours.  One has a feeling that it must be in the tens – if not hundreds – of thousands.  And while it not all that surprising – in light of how many people truly despise Donald J. Trump – it may well be an emotional and/or psychological response we would do well to avoid.   While psychologists inform us that that there is nothing abnormal about feeling smugly joyous when we see or hear about wicked people “getting theirs,” it is not healthy. Or, to quote the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (one of the first 19th century philosophers to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place):

                                                                   “To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is devilish.”

Let Congress, the DOJ,  FBI, DHS, I.R.S. as well as the states of New York and Georgia and his former freunde (friends) at Deutsche Bank - to mention but a few - lawfully saddle Donald Trump with the future he so richly deserves.  I for one look forward to a time when freudenfreude replaces schadenfreude as the most-oft used  - though miserably unpronounceable - German word in the English language.

 Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

It's Time to Pulverize PLCAA . . . Huh?

Even the most perfervid MAGA-ites have to know somewhere deep in whatever passes for their souls, that the past couple of weeks have been all that Democrats could hope or pray for. (And yes, despite what MAGA-ites believe, tons of Democrats do pray). I mean, consider that during the time that President Biden has been down with relapsing COVID-19, Congressional Democrats have managed to put together the required 50+1 votes needed to pass the “Inflation Recovery Act,” which will have an historic effect on taxes, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, climate change, inflation and ultimately lowering the national debt.  This passed within the  last hour - Sunday, August 7, 2022.  To make matters even more positive, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) convinced his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch  McConnell, to get enough Republicans on board to finally enact PACT Act, a bill to expand health care benefits for veterans who developed illnesses due to their exposure to burn pits during military service.  Then there were this past Tuesday’s primary elections in which the good people of Kansas overwhelmingly voted against a measure which would make abortion impossible in the Sunflower State.  And while yes, a majority of Congressional Republicans who  voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection did lose their primary bids to Trump-endorsed MAGA crazies, this could likely mean that many Republicans will simply stay home (if not vote for Democrats) come November.    

By passing seminal legislation, Congressional Democrats have also forced Republicans to show their true colors just 15 weeks before the upcoming mid-term general elections. Voters going to the polls will have to choose between Republicans who are against lowering the cost of prescription drugs, against veterans suffering from life-threatening illnesses they contracted while fighting for their country in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, against doing anything to curb inflation or global warming and in favor of protecting the rights of those who manufacture and sell military-grade weapons to civilians or those who are far more in step with what a clear majority of Americans favor.

Another piece of legislation about to hit the floor of Congress is a bill cosponsored by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), Dwight Evans (D-PA) and Jason Crow (D-CO). Called the Equal Access to Justice For Victims of Gun Violence (H.R. 2814), this bill would repeal the 17-year old Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), ensuring justice for victims and survivors and removing barriers to holding irresponsible gun industry actors accountable.

PLCAA was a top legislative priority for the corporate gun industry when President George W. Bush signed it into law in 2005. It contributed to the gun violence epidemic by enabling the gun industry to evade accountability at the expense of victims and survivors of gun violence who are denied the right to hold industry actors accountable. Put in lay terms, it means gun dealers and manufacturers are immune from lawsuits, and victims can’t sue them in court. This unique immunity is like no other in our nation. Car manufacturers, food producers, and tobacco companies all have to meet a safety standard and act with due care — or else they run the risk of being sued.

So why are guns any different? Because some politicians, for decades, prioritized profits over people. That’s why they’ve bent over backwards to protect the NRA and any other gun lobbyist who will write them a campaign check or endorse them in exchange for legislation like PLCAA.

In 2013, Representative Adam Schiff put the original Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence into the Congressional hopper.  Today, after nearly a decade, it stands a chance of passage . . . especially in light of all the recent mass-shootings across the country.   In a recent email many received from  Rep. Schiff, he wrote: “Five of the largest gun manufacturers made over one billion dollars in the last decade from selling assault-style weapons to civilians. While our nation’s bloodshed has increased exponentially, their profits have also skyrocketed, and yet the industry has complete legal immunity from civil lawsuits by victims and families even when their negligence contributes to the problem, all because of PLCAA.  That must change, and it’s why I have repeatedly introduced legislation to repeal PLCAA, the Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act. The NRA is already attacking me and working to prevent this bill from passing, which is why I’m reaching out. Keeping our Democratic House majority is critical to ensuring this legislation not only gets passed, but makes it to President Biden’s desk.”

From recent polling, it is clear that a majority of Americans are in favor of a ban on Assault Weapons.  And yet,  just this past Tuesday (August 2), all the House could muster was voted 217-213 (an almost total party-line vote) in favor of H.R. 1808, which would ban these military-style weapons (all but 5 Democrats voted in favor of the bill; all but 2 Republicans [Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Chris Jacobs of New York] voted against it.  You had better believe that Democrats will be campaigning against those who voted against the bill.  The same goes for the upcoming vote on H.R. 2814.  Though it will likely pass the House and likely not even make its way to the Senate floor, if properly explained to the American public, it could bring additional voters to the polls come November.

Getting rid of PLCAA is terribly important; it could force manufacturers of assault and other military-style weapons to spend more and more of their inflated profits on those who have been maimed and murdered by their products, on paying compensatory damages to victims rather than stock by-backs for the sake of their shareholders.

Please, consider writing, emailing or calling your Congressional representative and/or senators and demand that they pulverize PLCAA by voting in favor of H.R. 2814. Let’s help take power back from the merchants and manufacturers of mayhem and return it to the people . . . where it belongs.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Vin Scully: Shakespeare With a Mic

Long, longtime Dodger play-by-play announced Vin Scully passed away yesterday at age 94. He was, hands down, the best at what he did. I mean, have you ever attended a baseball game in which the vast majority of the fans in the stands were listening to the game on radio? Vin could do that.

Nearly 9 years ago, at the time of his retirement, I wrote a blog essay entitled "Vin Scully: Shakespeare With a Mic." In observing his passing . . . and with tears in my eyes, what follows is a reprint of that post .from August, 25, 2013 . . .

 Benjamin Franklin famously opined that "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  Well, I'm here to tell you that his list wasn't complete.  For indeed, if you are a Southern Californian there is a third eternal verity: that Vin Scully, the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the greatest announcer in the history of sports.  Period.  And, mirabile dictu, this past Friday, the Dodgers announced that the 85 year old Scully will be returning to the broadcast booth for a record 65th season in 2014. For Dodger fans -- indeed for all Angelenos -- Scully is much, much more than the voice of the Dodgers; he is, without question, the most beloved citizen of that place Dorothy Parker once called "72 suburbs in search of a city." When, several years ago, team owners asked fans to vote for their all-time favorite Dodger, guess who won?  Hint: it was neither Sandy Koufax nor Don Drysdale.  It was L.A's favorite redhead. 

Vin Scully has been with the Dodgers longer than Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics, and longer than Joe Paterno coached the Nittany Lions.  In fact, the only person ever to serve a single sports team longer is another Dodger: Tommy Lasorda, who signed his first contract in 1948 -- one year before Vin came on board. 

I first heard the voice of Vin Scully on April 18, 1958 -- the first game the Dodgers ever played in Los Angeles.  They beat the San Francisco (formerly New York) Giants 6-5.  Carl Erskine defeated Al Worthington; Clem Labine got the save and third baseman Dick Gray was the first Dodger to homer at the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.  I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the dulcet tones of the Dodger announcer.  It was as if he was talking to me and me alone.  By the end of that first season -- in which they finished a miserable 7th, 23 games behind the Milwaukee Braves -- I had my own radio.  Since then, I would estimate that I have heard Vin Scully call nearly 8,500 games, which means that next to my late father, his is the male voice I've heard most often in my life.

As any Dodger fan knows, Vin Scully does far more than merely announce a game.  He is a walking, talking and breathing baseball encyclopedia.  His memories are priceless; his stories are sensational.  He not only tells mostly first-hand stories of the past 70-plus years of baseball, but also, when appropriate, tidbits about world and Broadway history, literature and music.  At the same time, this 85-year old might also remind listeners that AC/DC does "Hell's Bells" and that "Enter Sandman" is by Metallica. He does all this while calling a baseball game.  And best of all, unlike just about any other announcer, he knows when to be silent.  I guess the greatest proof of the Scully's genius is that almost everyone attending games at Chavez Ravine (Dodger Stadium) is listening to him on the radio . . . even though the game is going on right in front of them.

Over the course of his career, Vin has called three perfect games, 25 no-hitters, 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games.  Among the iconic moments he has called:

• Don Larson's perfect game in the 1956 World Series: Got him! The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history, by Don Larson! A no hitter, a perfect game in a World Series ... Never in the history of the game has it ever happened in a World Series ... And so our hats off to Don Larson—no runs, no hits, no errors, no walks, no base runners. The final score: The Yankees, two runs, five hits and no errors. The Dodgers: No runs, no hits, no errors ... in fact, nothing at all. This was a day to remember, this was a ballgame to remember and above all, the greatest day in the life of Don Larsen. And the most dramatic and well-pitched ballgame in the history of baseball. ... Mel (Allen) you can put this in your ring and wear it a long time.

• Sandy Koufax's perfect game, September 9, 1965: And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.

• Hank Aaron's 715th home run on April 8, 1974: What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. … And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.

Vin Scully is more than an icon; more than a living legend.  He is, simply stated, the best there ever has been.  Scully is to baseball announcing what Shakespeare was to English literature, what Bach was to music, Einstein to theoretical physics or Sir Charles Chaplin to cinema -- both sui generis and nonpareil.  Scully has taught baseball -- both the game and the "game within the game" to countless millions over the past 65 years.  He has been both a brilliant constant and a thorough-going gentleman in an ever-changing world where far too many idols have feet of clay.  To my ear, he sounds just as young, vital and resonant in August 2013 as he did that first time I heard him back in April 1958.

When Sir Charles Chaplin died on December 25, 1977, I felt a tremendous sense of loss. Although I never met him, I had seen just about every film he'd ever made, and read every book ever written by or about him.  He was -- and still is -- to my way of thinking, the greatest genius in the history of cinema.  I remember reading dozens upon dozens of eulogies delivered by the great men and women of his profession; heartfelt and wonderfully literate sentiments by the likes of René Clair, Lord Olivier, Jacques Tati and Federico Fellini.  The simplest -- and yet the most touching -- was spoken by Bob Hope, whose words best sum up not only the life, times and achievements of "the little fellow," but Vin Scully as well:

"We were fortunate to have lived in his time."

Thank you Vin for being the third eternal verity.  We are so very fortunate to be living in your time.

©2013 Kurt F. Stone

In Search of Lost Time

                                   “Them Versus Us” - People’s Park, May 1969

In mid-May 1969, the counterculture came into armed conflict with the California National Guard in Berkeley, California. On one side were thousands upon thousands of angry students from America’s premier public university, armed mostly with shovels, spades, potting soil and placards; on the other, stood soldiers armed with rifles, bayonets and tear gas. Over a three-day period, student protesters - long-haired, deeply anti-Vietnam, anti-military draft and pro-people power - stood up to the university’s regents, who had announced their intention to develop a parcel of university-owned land about four blocks south of the Berkeley campus and just east of Telegraph Avenue in order to build an athletic facility.

Furious at the proposed development, a angry gathering of students dragged sod, trees and flowers to the empty lot and proclaimed it “the People’s Park.” In response, UC erected a fence. The student body president-elect urged a crowd on campus to “take back the park” and more than 6000 people marched down Telegraph to do just that. A violent clash ensued, leaving one man (James Rector, who was visiting friends in Berkeley and watching from the roof of Granma Books) dead, a young carpenter (Alan Blanchard) permanently blinded by a load of birdshot fired directly to his face and at least 128 Berkeley students and residents admitted to local hospitals for head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police.  Then-governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency, thus giving him legal authority to summon nearly 3,000 troops. Upon being informed of Rector’s death and Blanchard’s blinding, Reagan explained to members of the press, "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect things will happen, and that people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides."  

I well remember the extraordinary mix of anger, energy, fear, and youthful self-righteousness of those days now more than a half-century ago.  I remember a number of my friends and classmates hauled off to the Santa Rita Jail over in Dublin. According to their accounts, they were forced to lie face down in the yard while guards hit their calves with nightsticks, demanding that they, the protesters, scream out WE LOVE YOU BLUE MEANIES!  (The “Blue Meanies” were a fictional army of fierce though buffoonish music-hating beings and the main antagonists in the surreal 1968 Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine.  Ironically, it was - and still  is - the nickname of one of the most potent magic mushrooms on the planet.)  The protesters were all eventually released, just in time to finish out the Spring Quarter.   The university decided not to develop the land.  Indeed, it did become a people’s park, flush with flowers and vegetables, swing-sets and families, and with the passage of time, lots of homeless people. 

A month or so after the riots I found myself in Washington, D.C., about to begin an internship in the offices of U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.  From the perspective of 53 years, I find it amazing that at the time of my arrival on Capitol Hill, Senator Gravel was a mere 38 years old . . . 3 years younger than my youngest child is today; then, he  seemed so old.  I well remember looking for a place to rent, and happened upon an area called “DuPont Circle” which today, is extremely pricey.  Back in 1969, it was pretty hip and mirabile dictu actually had a pharmacy called PEOPLE’S DRUGS.  I felt like the revolution had  been  won!  It took about 30 seconds to decide that this was the place to drop anchor.  (Back then, a spacious 2-bedroom apartment in a late 19th-century brownstone rented for under $200.00 a month. Today, the same space costs in the many thousands.)  2 months after my arrival, Woodstock happened . . . love and peace, pot and flowers were back in bloom - both in Berkeley and in Bethel, New York. I will be perfectly honest: I did not attend Woodstock, and am glad I chose instead, to attend the Berkshire Festival where I had the great joy of listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Erich Leinsdorf, play Beethoven’s Ninth. And there was neither a drop of rain nor a hint of mud.

So why am I writing about 1969?  Well, just the other day, an Alameda County judge named Frank Roesch ruled that UC Berkeley can begin clearing the historic park and starting site work on the construction of apartments and dorm space because the university’s plan does not violate the California Environmental Quality Act.  UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley first proposed redeveloping the park in 2018, calling it a first-in-the-nation plan to build long-term supportive housing for homeless people on university land. The university would also build 1,100 units of badly-needed student housing and retain some of the park as open green space, while also erecting a monument to its storied history.

But two organizations — the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and Make UC a Good Neighbor — jointly filed a lawsuit, arguing, among other things, that the university had other options for developing housing and had not adequately studied them, as required by state law. Two other groups filed their own challenges, which will be consolidated into the judge’s decision.  A UC spokesperson issued a statement stating  that university officials are “pleased with the judge’s decision and look forward to the court making it official early next week, just as we look forward to starting construction sometime this summer.”

City and university officials have hailed the plan as a model for other universities and a landmark solution to both California’s homeless crisis and the housing shortage at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses.  “It begins with partnership,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said earlier this spring. “And it also begins with the university’s accepting that this is our responsibility to address the tragedy of homelessness in our midst.”

In learning of the judge’s decision, I found myself recalling in pretty vivid detail, the events and feelings of 1969, and asking myself “On what side of the issue do you stand Doc?  Has there been a change in your worldview from when you were 20 and today, when you’re a few days away from turning 73?  Is there truth to  the old saw "If you’re not a liberal when you’re young you haven’t got a heart, but if you aren’t a conservative when you grow up you haven’t got a smart?”  In the midst of my pondering, I find myself remembering the title of Marcel Proust’s staggeringly long 7-volume novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), originally translated as Remembrance of Things Past. Why?  Well for one thing, I  am myself “in search of lost time.” Then too, at the time of the People’s Park riot, I was midway through volume 3 of Proust’s masterpiece, The Guermantes Way (Le côté de Guermantes) and having my head filled with thoughts about politics and society, romance and reality. . . the greed and vacuousness of society . . . whether it be 19th century France or 20th century America.

In my search of lost time, I find that while I am perfectly sanguine with what I/We did in vigorously - and for some, violently - protesting the People’s Park evisceration 53 years ago, I am just as sanguine with having the University reclaim a hefty parcel of that park in order to build affordable housing for both students and the homeless 53 years later.  Back in 1969, things seemed so much more black-and-white; of those whose motivation was doing good, versus those whose motivation was doing well.  Back then, gradations of grey were difficult to discern; the young couldn’t wait to change the world for the better . . . to inject idealism into the body politic.  We were motivated as much by anger as by optimism.

Today, of course, anger is still a major motivator in politics. The difference, it seems to me, is that for far too many, optimism has given way to both pessimism and fear … fear of “the other,” fear of failure . . . a fear engendered by every conspiracy under the sun. Many find irrational comfort in anchoring their boots in the concrete of mindless dogmatism, and taking both their marching orders and worldview from those who often do not believe the bilge they spew.  (Of these spewers of bilge, Proust himself reminds us “It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.”) To them I say “I’m not going to argue with you in an attempt to change your already made-up minds; I’ll be quiet and let you be wrong.”

Searching through the dustbin of lost time can be both beneficial and a bit bemusing, to say the least. As we age, remembering facts of past events can lull us into mental  haziness. But the search can also be empowering . . . especially when remembering how we felt during seminal events of our youthful past. If we discover that with age we’ve changed, so be it. But never forget that so long as we have breath in our lungs, ideas in our heads and ideals in our hearts, we can still help foster positive change.

 It’s what Proust brilliantly referred to as “. . . that translucent alabaster of our memories.”

 Copyright2022 Kurt F. Stone

Patrick Michaels Meets His Maker

Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., who spoke out often and brashly against the prevailing view that climate change needs urgent attention, thus becoming a favorite of climate change skeptics and a target of criticism by those advocating action on greenhouse gases and in other areas, died on July 15 at his home in Washington. He was 72. Unlike many climate change deniers, Dr. Michaels had sterling academic credentials; he held a doctorate in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was for decades a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and Virginia’s state climatologist, and had published in scientific journals. At the same time, he was a staunch libertarian who worked hand-in-glove with both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to spread the word that “The world is not coming to an end because of global warming. Further, we don’t really have the means to significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet.”

Michaels was the co-author of several books, including “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media” (2004) Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (2009) and “Lukewarming: The New Climate Science That Changes Everything” (2016).  Snippets from these books are frequently recited by climate-change deniers as “proof” that not everyone believes the earth is going to hell in a handbasket or that human beings are the proximate cause.

In short, Dr. Michael’s was to politically-charged climate change denial what such scientists as Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich and Rachael Carson were to such seminal climate change awareness works as The Population Bomb (1968) and Silent Spring (1962).  One huge difference, of course, is that Ehrlich and Carson are still read and quoted by the masses [Dr. Ehrlich, BTW, just turned 90 this past May] while Dr. Michaels is read and quoted almost exclusively by movement conservatives. Ehrlich and Carson are recognized as experts in their field; Dr. Michaels is largely considered an outlier.

What follows, briefly, is an imagined conversation between the recently deceased Dr. Michaels and his maker . . . the Master of the Universe.  In place of the term “G-d,” I have chosen to use the Divine Pronoun “CO,” which as longtime readers know is  to be understood as “He/She” ).

CO: Well, well, as I eternally live and breath; it is you, Dear Dr. Michaels. So sorry to meet you under these circumstances. Please accept my deepest sympathies to your dear wife Rachael and your children, Erika and Robert. It’s been a most impactful and melodramatic three score and twelve.

PM: And whatever do you mean by that?

CO: Well, in a nutshell, that I fully expected far more from you. I mean, you started out your career in Climate science with so much promise, and then, as time went by, you kind of . . . sold out to the highest bidder and turned the pursuit of scientific truth into the divertissement of politics. I well remember that piece you published back in the late 1990s when you predicted that hybrid vehicles, such as Toyota’s Prius, “. . . were in the process of finding out that gas is so inexpensive in this country (despite its 40 cents per gallon tax) that no one except die-hard technophiles and hyper-greens are willing to shell out several thousand dollars extra for a hybrid.” I hope you will admit, Patrick, that you were wrong, wrong, wrong.

PM:  With all due respect, I certainly will not!  I was, am and will always be ahead of the scientific curve!

CO:  Oh really? Then how do you account for the fact that the vast majority of your scientific colleagues find your conclusions on global warming to be sorely wanting, and  accuse you of having sold out to petroleum-backed and financed interests like CATO and the Competitive Enterprise Institute CEI)?  I well remember when you accepted a whopping $100,000 donation from a fossil-fuel interest, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, back in  the days when you first joined up with CTI.  I will admit that science can and does include advocacy, but you somehow found a way to profit by it all, for which I find you guity.

PM: With all due respect, dear CO, there have long been scientists who have stood firmly in place against the majority of their so-called colleagues, and were eventually proven to be correct.  Is that not so?”

CO:  Are you really trying to compare yourself to Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler or Semmelweis? To misquote the late Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, “Professor Michaels, I knew Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler and Semmelweis, and you, sir, are not they!”  Being eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, I can tell you I really, truly had a Divine Plan in creating the universe.  If you pay attention to the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible (you called it the “Old Testament”), you will note, I hope, a certain unity of purpose spelled out in the creation the universe.  To wit, the order in which I created it.  I created the oceans before the seas, and the trees before the birds, and virtually everything else before humanity,  Which is to make obvious that neither the seas need the fish nor the trees need the birds.  Nothing which precedes depends on that which antecedes.  And since humanity comes last - the so-called “Crown of Creation” -  this obviously means that nothing depends upon  humanity, but rather that humanity depends on virtually everything.  In other words, dear Professor Michaels, you are wrong, wrong wrong . . . theologically, historically and scientifically.

PM: So what is it you’re trying to say?

CO: That you have placed a major - and G-d forbid fatal - stumbling block in the path toward saving the planet I created; that you have caused so many to ignore - or forget or misinterpret - my very First Commandment to “. . . be fruitful, multiply and act as responsible stewards of the good earth.” In the original, Dr. Michaels, this reads:

                                           פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ  (p’ru, u’revu, u’m’l’ooh et ha-aretz v’kheeb-shuah)

PM: I get the feeling that you aren’t terrible happy with me. Where do we go from here?

CO: See that elevator over there?

PM: Yes, what am I to do?

CO: Enter and wait for the doors to close . . . then press the button that takes you to the basement, where most regrettably, you will experience maximal universal warming . . .

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Speaking of Senator Manchin . . .

Back in 1966, when he first ran for political office, Ronald Reagan, who was on the receiving end of a lot of ill will and jibes from California Republicans, announced that he would follow what he termed the unwritten Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” This made for smart politics, for following on the heels of the disastrous 1964 election when Lyndon Johnson destroyed Senator Barry Goldwater in the Electoral College (486-52) and won two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress, the GOP was in the finger-pointing mood. This “Eleventh Commandment” strategy worked well for Reagan, for not only did it fit his personality as “a nice man with a lose screw,” but led him to a 57%-42% landslide victory over the incumbent Democratic Governor, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. And, as they say, “The rest is history.”

For the next half century, Republicans pretty much heeded their Eleventh Commandment, which was, in fact, not the creation of Ronald Reagan, but rather of the long-forgotten Gaylord Parkinson, who served as state chair of the California Republican Party during the 1960s. Even during the worst days of Richard Nixon and Watergate, Republicans managed to put the screws to their president not by castigating him as a person, but rather by adhering to a tightly-constructed legalistic strategy. This all ended in 2016, when a ton of Republican “heavy hitters” (e.g. Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio et al) called Donald Trump virtually every name in the book . . . and then some.  Fat lot of good it did ‘em! Once “The Orange Man” became their official nominee, the Eleventh Commandment was reinstated and, in the words of Bing Crosby “. . . seldom [was] heard a discouraging word and the skies [were] not cloudy all day.” That lasted until January 7, 2022 when Republican leaders in Congress lambasted their leader for grave sins against the body politic.  Of course, their brickbats soon faded, and within less than 72 hours, most went back to honoring their Eleventh Commandment.  And ever since, institutional Republicans (with a few notable exceptions like Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as well as Senator Mitt Romney) have stood idly by with mouths shut and permitted their titular leader rant and rave as he pleases. Once again, they are - at least on the surface - a unified party.

Looking over at the other side of the aisle, it is obvious that Democrats have never abided by a commandment which forbids negative speech against one’s political compatriots. As far back as the 1930s, Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher, highest-paid Hollywood actor and political pundit joked, “I am a member of no organized party: I am a Democrat.” Back in those days, the Democrats were America’s party of dysfunction, an unstable coalition of urban Northern liberals and rural Southern conservatives. Occasionally, the two wings worked together, as during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, but more often they clashed, right up until the party splintered during the 1960s, as Southern conservatives bailed out to join the Republicans.  For the past several years, there have been obvious, clear-cut factions within the Democratic caucus: moderates and centrists, progressives and near-socialists, and a hard-core conservative or two. 

Included in this latter listing is Joseph Manchin III, the Senior Senator from West Virginia.  Manchin, a multi-millionaire whose fortune comes mostly from coal and gas, is wealthy enough to drive a Maserati and live on a houseboat in the Potomac River when in Washington. He is, without question, the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill. How so?  Well, in order for Democrats to pass any legislation in the United States Senate requiring a 51-vote majority (as opposed to a 60-vote filibuster-proof "super majority”), every Democrat - plus Vice President Harris - must vote as a unified bloc.  That’s where Senator Manchin’s power comes in, for like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) he can all but single-handedly stymie any piece of legislation. Just this past Thursday, Manchin informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would not support a Democratic proposal for new climate change spending and higher taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.  This came after more than a year of negotiating (in what turned out to be bad faith) with fellow Democrats, always promising that he was “seeking a common middle ground” by which he could find a package which he could agree to vote for - a measure which would, in addition to allocating funds for climate change and lowering prescription costs, would be paid for it by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  His announcement caused extraordinary consternation on the part of his Democratic colleagues.  Truth to tell, the Democrats should not have been so shocked; after all, Manchin had already stymied earlier attempts to pass President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" legislation over concerns about the deficit and inflation. 

As Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Senator Manchin can pretty much do whatever is best for him and his financial portfolio.  It should be noted that over the past several years, Senator Manchin has received the most funding from the oil and gas industry of any senator, including $1.6 million in donations from fossil fuel PACs alone.  This should come as no surprise, for not only is Manchin the Energy and Natural Resources Chair, he also represents West Virginia - the country’s largest coal-producing state.  In standing steadfast against anything green, Manchin is serving two masters at once: the mining industry and his own stock portfolio.  

Senator Manchin has drawn a lot of withering criticism from his Democratic colleagues for all but single-handedly limiting, then scuttling, his party’s attempt to enact legislation directly addressing climate change.  And then, within 24 hours of announcing that he could not go along with their latest proposal, he called in to a West Virginia radio show during which he suggested that in another month or so, he might see his way clear to salvaging the last bits of President Biden’s domestic agenda!  Is it any wonder that Democrats have had enough of (and with) Joe Manchin? While still in Saudi Arabia, President Biden was asked whether he thought Senator Manchin had been negotiating in good faith. The President demurred, saying he was not the one who had been negotiating with him. 

There seems to be next-to-nothing the White House and Congressional Democrats can do or offer in order to get Joe Manchin to cease being such a damnable political stumbling block. As New York Times writer Emily Cochrane noted in a recent piece, “On Capitol Hill, Mr. Manchin is something of a unicorn — the only national Democrat from his ruby-red state — and acts and votes accordingly. Set to face voters in 2024, he is unlikely to be threatened by a primary challenger in a state former President Donald J. Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020.”  And so, it looks like the disorganized party of Will Rogers are stuck with him . . . unless or until they make his vote irrelevant.  How to do this?  Democrats have to put as much time, talent and treasure into flipping at least 3 or 4 senate seats this coming November.  The best chances will be in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.  The first 2 are open seats in which Republican  incumbents have decided to retire and have political crazies running in their stead (J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania); the latter two have incumbents carrying serious baggage (Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Marco Rubio in Florida) and running against smart, well-funded Democrats (John Fettermann in Pennsylvania  and Val Demmings in Florida).  If, like me, you receive fund-raising emails from most Democratic campaigns, consider chipping in a few bucks from time to time.

Democrats have the issues: abortion, guns violence, home-grown terrorism, climate change, and the Republicans refusal to abandon their so-called 11th Commandment. Can this be enough to overcome Party of Trump whose vocabulary will be limited to precisely 5 words: “inflation” and “the price of gas.”  

I have to believe it is.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone   

"Between the Hammer and the Anvil"

Later this evening, President Biden will depart on Air Force One for Israel, his first official visit to the Middle East since taking the oath of office nearly 18 months ago. After talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (who at the moment also serves as Israel’s Foreign Minister) and representatives of the Palestinian Authority, the President will get back on board his plane Air Force One and become the first POTUS to fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia.  During his brief stay in Jeddah, where he will be attending the GCC+3 summit on Saturday with leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, along with Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Biden will also hold private talks with both Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (generally referred to as “MBS”), the oil-rich kingdom’s de facto leader.

Diplomatic missions don’t simply pop up out of thin air; they require a loft of careful planning and frequently involve complex, interweaving back stories.  As regards Israeli P.M. Lapid’s preparations, he has, over the past several days had personal conversations with Jordanian King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (the first in at least 5 years) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Israel has long had diplomatic relations with the first, shares common interests with the second, and wishes to become closer diplomatically with the third. In a message to the Saudis ahead of Biden’s expected direct flight from Israel to Jeddah, Prime Minister Lapid called for all countries in the region to build ties with Israel. “From Jerusalem, the [US] president’s plane will fly to Saudi Arabia, and he will carry with it a message of peace and hope from us,” Lapid said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

For his part, President Biden’s preparations for attending the GCC+3 and face-to-face meeting with MBS) involve issues ranging from Saudi human rights violations to the brutal murder/dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who worked for an American newspaper. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden was pointedly harsh when it came to characterizing the Saudi track record on human rights abuses as compared to Donald Trump, who frequently treated the oil-rich kingdom as America’s 51st state. During a debate in 2019, Biden said, “. . . the present government of that country [has] very little social redeeming value,” and that he would stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and “make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”

Now, of course, Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia has as much to do with oil and gas prices (which despite the daily dooming headlines has actually come down by nearly half dollar a gallon over the past several weeks). Considering how close we are to the midterm elections and how low the president’s ratings are - largely due to gas prices and inflation - he must be seen as doing something to help ameliorate the situation. Simply stated, that’s what politicians do.

As MSN op-ed writer Jonah Shepp noted in today’s Intelligencer column, “Whether or not one buys the justifications, global economics and politics have conspired to send Biden to meet with the Saudis whether he wants to or not. And from a moral standpoint, he probably doesn’t.”  Such are the exigencies of global politics, where idealism  and a nation’s historic sense what we stand for, of what is right and wrong must, from  time to time, take a deeply troubling backseat to economic necessity.  In going and - as some would have it - “groveling” at the feet of the Saudis, President Biden is nonetheless pretty much insulated from Trumpist and otherwise reactionary rhetorical brickbats.  Those who will most likely find fault with his hat-in-hand diplomacy at the doorstep of the House of Saud are those perched to his political left; who cannot and will not abide with lending credence to a kingdom ruled by ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabists.

(For the uninitiated, Wahhabi is to Sunni Islam what Dominionism is to fundamentalist Christianity: Taliban-like theocracy for the masses, but libertine lifestyles for the leaders.)  It’s the Wahhibi revivalists who keep women veiled and under the thumbs of their husbands and brothers, and issue lethal fatwas at the drop of a burqa. Likewise, it’s the Dominionists who demand that an impregnated 10-year old may not, regardless of circumstance, undergo an abortion . . . unless it’s their own daughter, sister or mistress.

The current Israeli P.M., former television host, journalist, actor and songwriter, Yair Lapid, who was until less than a decade ago widely ridiculed as a cocky and superficial political novice, is in somewhat the  same position as Joe Biden, one of the most experienced and long-lived politicians of the past half century. Like Biden, Lapir is in an electoral pickle; the Israeli government has pretty much collapsed, and he is facing yet another nationwide election. His political coalition, which runs the gamut from centrists, two-state enthusiasts and Arab parties, is once again taking on Bibi Nitanyahu’s Likud block. He senses that increasing Israel’s ties to gulf-state, oil-rich Arab states and sultanates makes good political sense; hence the recent reaching out to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E.

At the same time, this means that Lapid is all but giving his state’s imprimatur to countries and kingdoms whose record on human rights and the treatment of both women and religious minorities is the bipolar opposite of the Jewish State . . . the only democratic state in the Middle East.

Talk about being between the proverbial rock and a hard place! But then again no one ever said that hardcore politics and diplomacy were easy. Just how much civility, humanity and morality Lapid is willing to give up in order to secure greater, more powerful friendships is anyone’s guess. Selling the soul of a state to those who have spent generations promising the utter destruction of that state is a hard call. In an ideal world - whatever that is - Israel would tell Saudi Arabia and MBS to “stick it!” . . .. to begin treating women with equanimity and understanding . . . to finally abandon the 7th century and begin acting like modern men.

In Hebrew, the translation of “Between a rock and a hard place” is בין ההפשיט והסדן (bayn ha-pasheet v’ha-sah-dahn) literally meaning “between the hammer and the anvil.”  While I certainly do not envy P.M. Lapid for being in this position, I do understand that in reaching out to MBS,  he may well be positioned to help make Saudi Arabia - and indeed many of the oil-rich Muslim sheikdoms - better able  to enter the 21st century. 

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone